


Prettyboy

by Chicagoish



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: 1960s, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1960s, Art, Divorce, Drinking, Homophobia, Infidelity, M/M, Mentions of HIV/AIDS, Mentions of an actual person - Andy Warhol (RIP), Photography, Smoking, Step-parents, Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2019-09-15 15:15:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 19
Words: 60,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16935636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chicagoish/pseuds/Chicagoish
Summary: 'Prettyboy. My Prettyboy. He was always, and yet never mine.'Frank Iero - ardent photographer of New York's gloomy streets, an erudite, an aesthete, and a Romantic - accustomed to his new life, after his third marriage, he is convinced that nothing is going to ruin this one for him.Gerard is defiant and rebellious. He does not let his confusion quell him. Instead, he passes it off to others.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I am a busy high school student. Updates are inconsistent. Please excuse my kicking-the-can-down-the-road-ness.

_A wise person told me once, in order to completely liberate yourself from the burden of your own memories, your problems, you need to take it from the beginning. So, here I am, taking it from the beginning._

_To whom it may concern, this is the story of how I caused the downfall of my own life._

_And_   _now, God may inflict the world's pain on me and I will not remonstrate in the slightest._

**Before The Beginning**

After the events that took place on the night of my second wedding—abysmal, just like the first one—I wouldn't have believed it, even if you paid me, that my mother would attend my third wedding. She was convinced I was the only 31-year-old with three engagements on his record, you see. But give me the benefit of the doubt here. I can say with candor that that woman went on a shopping spree to find what she'll wear on my next wedding, before I had even spoken of my intentions to propose to my latest girlfriend. She was jinxing it before I had even had the time to make it official. Tell you what, it wouldn't come as a surprise to me, had she called me the day after I had announced to her my engagement with Lana to say, _'Son, do you think I should wear plain gold or plain silver at the next one? I just learned that silver and gold is said to bring great misfortune. Good gracious me! But I did that on all of your past weddings!_ _'_

To be brutally honest now, I sort of knew when my past marriages were on their deathbeds. I possessed that gift of foreshadowing; it was just that I was always just a bit too late. I knew before it happened, that things would go downhill, but I only pointed it out to myself just as they started to roll down.

My first wife's name was Ettie; Ettie Schroeder. Part-German and singularly beautiful, with blonde hair and the piquant contrast of dark eyes. I'd met her on my stepfather's 47th birthday get-together, as her father was my stepfather's boss. To say that my marriage with Ettie had been a happy one would be a tasteless joke. Ettie, never mind the looks, was overall a bitch, to put it simply. Of course, from both sides, the marriage was of convenience. I'd been twenty years old at the time and reckless enough to think she could love me when she had Mr. Pretty-green-eyes. I mean, he did have gorgeous eyes, but I was by all means not content with what I found out. I hadn't tested her too much; we'd known each other for two months, and we decided to get married. Needless to say, her resistance to infidelity didn't last long; she soon ended up knocked up with a baby that I sure knew was not mine because, for one, we hadn't even had sex before. 

Fast-forward to eight years and many crushed relationships later, staggering in and out of my gloomy apartment in New York, I'd thought I'd found the woman of my life one night in the haze of a drunken hour. Betty was her name. From the first day we started dating, I began paying close attention to my whereabouts, regulated my drinking, and tried not to repeat my past-mistakes with Ettie. For Lord, I'll never learn. 

Then came our wedding. Our momentary marriage was laying, dying, as we drank champagne and listened to toasts to our eternal love. On that ailing night, you see, an ungainly twenty-year-old Frank came across some light-pink slips buried deep in his soon-to-be wife's purse, folded so many times, it was excessively suspicious. I swear the woman had folded them twenty times, way over the top, so much that he, as a skeptical soon-to-be husband, dared and unfolded them. And before my very eyes were revealed, the wedding invitations with Betty's name on it and another fellow's that I was certainly not acquainted with. Obviously, it was written by someone with excellent penmanship. At the very start, I remembered I read,  _'With love, Betty and Matthias invite you to celebrate their union at...'_

And as if that wasn't shocking enough to give me a heart attack, their wedding ceremony was to be held on the same night as our own. An hour later. Fifty minutes from then, to be exact. And do not ask me how Betty would manage to sneak off from _our_  wedding to go to her next one, I couldn't tell you. I swear I had tried to keep quiet when I first found out, but eventually, like the big wuss I was, I wound up swooning as Betty and I cut the cake together.

My mother and aunt prayed on their knees that night, as I was on my way to the hospital in the car of my stepfather. I hallucinated Betty cutting the cake with a jigsaw, then. Blood spurting illogically everywhere. And it may come as a surprise to you, but I'd not taken any drugs. 

I could hear the splashing water droplets hit the car window. Trickle down slowly. A song _in adagio_.  _In minore._  My drunken uncle's voice. Him telling the punchline before the joke. "Women, Frankie, boy," my uncle had said that night, hiccuping, then resting his hand on my thigh. Hiccup again. "Strange creatures, they are. Us men are less complicated." Perhaps he had been right.

And now, we get deeper. We reopen wounds, reader, wounds that still sting from vinegar, goddamn vinegar somebody has put between the shallow scrapes, ruthlessly watching me ache in that moment. 

You see, I met Lana after one of my photography shows. By then, I had become pretty known as 'Frank Iero? Oh, didn't he have something to do with the artwork at Bemelmans?' in the cafes of afternoon New York City, especially in the Upper East Side. I believe that was enough for Lana. Thus, she and I hit it off right away. I nowadays claim I was desperate. She used to claim she was infatuated with me from the first time she laid eyes upon me. I took my chances. The thing about Lana, she had a kind of understated beauty; perhaps it was because she was so disarmingly unaware of her prettiness. Humble and modest, I used to think. She was one of those women that had charmed me with her glamour from day one. When she smiled or laughed, I couldn't help but smile too. To be in her company felt often like a gift, a wish granted, even though the transitions in the future proved something completely different. She had taken me to her empty apartment in New York, and not much later, to her actual house in Pennsylvania. 

See what I mean, I was desperate? I agreed to go to Pennsylvania with a half-stranger. More so, I let her lead me to Squirrel Hill.

Miserable, petty-talking, damned Squirrel Hill. May the earth open up and bury it deep in the infernal. That place does not always bring forth happy memories nowadays. More like, nightmares or seizures. But my mind is rather temperamental, I have to admit. Sometimes, I tend to recall Squirrel Hill as the place where beauty once resided, where it thrived and withered.

Strangely, though, I do not remember a thing. Lana insisted on that I had begged her to take me with her to Pennsylvania. I found that pretty believable—if it was not her that enchanted me that day, it was her dazzling perfume. And she soon told me she wanted marriage, so, I took her out a few months after knowing her, and popped the question, simultaneously ignoring my mother rolling her eyes somewhere in the back at the restaurant. 

Though I do not blame her. First time I'd proposed to a woman, my mother had wept. By the second time, though, and a couple of others that didn't go as planned, she would roll her eyes. 

After getting to know Lana, I had concluded that she and I were very much alike. She had been married twice before, like me at the time, and she had had two children. But there lied the problem. I was a little reluctant when it came to children, never had been good with them. Babies hated me, and when I found out that she had teenagers, oh God, I would've considered making a run for it, had I not developed such deep affection for her—but that didn't change the fact that I was as clueless as it gets. I did not want to experience adolescence twice in my life, let alone thrice, because she had  _two_  sons. 

There was her youngest, Michael. The kid was fifteen and a staunch supporter, very resistant on the beliefs of pacifism. He wouldn't eat meat or anything that had come close to meat. He would refuse to hold a knife in his hands. I would even believe he was a commie, since he would arbitrarily quote Marx when we all spent time together. There was no doubt, that the young gentleman was quite above his age. When he spoke, he had that tendency, to make you feel as if you were speaking to an inveterate philosopher. His answer to my preparing 'I really love your mother' was just a casual, 'Life is short, love is energy,' as he sprawled on his chair, as he formed his lips to something resembling an approving smile. At that moment, I was utterly convinced the kid was high on something, but as he went on with the same attitude every day, I began to marginally understand his absurd style.

However, Lana's eldest son was unique in his own way. That is the way to describe him, for now, at the very least.

The seventeen-year-old was Gerard; uniqueness is such an inadequate word. He was catching the attention of everybody, striking from the depth of his eyes to his gentle expression every time he would steal a glance to me. So, I would look at him brazenly, and that's the way it was. The way it used to be should most probably have stayed as it were.

Gerard was outgoing, rebellious, and as he had not failed to show me from the beginning, most certainly too busy to deal with me. There was nothing in his countenance that indicated rudeness or anything; he just refused to acknowledge my presence excessively. Rightly, I consulted my dear soon-to-be wife on the matter, as she had been the one to advise me to approach her sons, because naturally, if we were to live under the same roof soon, I had to gain her children's trust. Lana suggested giving him time, so our plans were postponed temporarily.

The seventeen-year-old had been difficult to find, at first. Literally. I had been waiting a whole week for the kid to show up at his ownhouse and he turned up on a Sunday night, looking as if he were slightly intoxicated, which now that I think about it, could have just been him showing off his vast repertoire. Consequently, I didn't venture to utter a word to him that night. I simply lied to Lana that I had had a talk with the kid and he was perfectly fine with us. I said to myself, Gerard did not care, anyhow. I could hide behind that excuse and wing it as our relationship and trust grew. 

My proper first meeting with the so-called Gerard could have gone better, in my head, since he sat opposite me at the dinner table and merely read his book, soundlessly. I recall I had to clear my throat so many times to get his attention, and even then, I only got a half-witty answer as he cast his eyes at me, lifted his eyebrows, and asked,

"Do you want me to bring you a glass of water?"

I had looked at him wide-eyed and replied, "No, thank you," and then grasped the opportunity to introduce myself. "I'm Frank. You must be Gerard."

"Must I?" he'd replied and looked down at his book again, and from the corner of his mouth, he murmured, "Frank? Oh, that's not good," causing me to frown.

"It's not? What, my name?"

"Yes, your name."

"Well, what's wrong with my name?" 

"It's 'Frank'. My friends will totally confuse you with the last one. He was a Frank. Couldn't you be goddamn Stanley, Frank?" 

A week after, I held Lana's hand on their dinner table, made a toast to us, and she professed her love to me, simultaneously throwing out the fact that we've been secretly engaged for a month. I was quite taken aback, seeing that her eldest son didn't react, in any way, negatively. At first, I thought that he and his brother conspired to inflict some kind of torture to me in our first week, when we tried to live under the same roof for the first time. Once or twice I'd woken up from my sleep, soaked in sweat, after having nightmares about the Way brothers concocting evil schemes, which was utterly ridiculous, and I realized that when I told Lana the next morning.

"You're just nervous, dear," she'd told me, seeping calmly at her warm coffee. "Trust me, Mikey likes you already. Huh? Well, Gerard is, well, Gerard. He'll come around, I'm sure."

The following week passed like a river's flow and, before I knew it, Lana was walking down the aisle, arm in arm with her father, the old fellow that didn't hold back on throwing glares at me throughout the whole thing. My best friend, Ray, had agreed on being my best man for the third time, so, he was standing slightly behind me, now and then reminding me in a whisper to 'not fuck this one up, Frank'. It was a happy memory. I was part of their family, they were part of mine. Most importantly for me back then; Lana was my wife. Everything was going well, looking up, for the first time in a while.

"Can you tell the black-haired one to stop moving around so much, please? I can't snap a picture like that!" the photographer flailed his arms around like a maniac as the elder Way brother continued to mess with his brother's hair, nudging him on the side and picking on him with a devilish smirk on his face. I gave him a light slap on the back of his head as we were all waiting for him. He turned to me with a whimsical smile, rubbing the back of his head. 

And as the photographer yelled, on top of his lungs, "Three!" the flash reminded me to smile at the camera and not at the devil in front of me. The rest of it was a blur as I was lost in the plans of my future with my wife and her family. My mother's stare was mostly boring into me, as she was in the background of it all.

I swear, I never intended to ruin that one. I was simply the unfortunate Frank I always am, found at an auspicious moment.


	2. Chapter 2

I had a blue sedan back in '61, a neatly dressed wife on the passenger's seat, and two youngsters in the back of the car, inquiring about the time, how long it was going to take us until we were there. Yet my hand was firm around the steering wheel and I didn't swivel the car once. My cowering in my seat went by unnoticed as the elder Way son was jibing at his brother, who had began to raise his voice to denote his depleting patience. It was then I had began to realize I obviously couldn't discern their voices and, boy, I wouldn't want Lana dumping me for mistaking her sons. My mother would actually start to make fun of me, and she'd have the right to, if I wrecked my third marriage like that. 

"You know, I'm not the only one in this car. Why don't you ask our noble driver, Gerard?" Lana smiled at me lopsidedly once her son had inquired again about the time. Her hand reached out for my cheek and I leaned into her affectionate touch, keeping my eyes on the road.

"Sir, how long till we're there?" I saw a reserved look in Gerard's eyes. My smile was of amusement.

"You don't have to call me 'sir' anymore, you know, Gerard. You can just call me Frank."

Lana beside me laughed heartily. And how heartwarming her laugh was. "Or how about you start calling him Dad?" she proposed and I hadn't been able to catch the kid's facial expression, but from his scoff, I could tell he was not very pleased with the idea. He didn't look angry when I caught a glimpse of him again. 

He leaned into my driver's chair and rested his head on my shoulder, actually startling me for a second. I was quite surprised by his sudden change of heart; the way he tapped a rhythm on my shoulders, chewed chewing gum loudly right next to my ears, whereas lately, he had often waved me off. Mostly. Come to think of it, perhaps Lana's idea of the trip was an effective plan she had put on.

"How long till we're there, Frank?"

"Roughly twenty minutes, Gerard."

From the corners of my eyes, I strained so I could look at Lana's pleased smile, her batting her long lashes at me. "So. Ever been to Squam Lake, Frank?" Even though she knew the answer. She'd asked me when she'd thought of this little road trip, a while back. 

"No, but I've been to many lakes before, elsewhere."

"Ever been to New Hampshire? The people in the countryside are nutsy. Away with the fairies."

"Top drawer cuckoos. Even though New Hampshire used to be a free state," said Michael.

"What does that have to do with the fact that the people are all wackos?" Gerard interjected as I was having my moment with my Lana; she was stroking my cheek.

"Former confederate states tend to be filled to the brim with loonies," rejoined the younger one. 

"Frank's from Massachusetts," announced Lana so as to grab the boys attention, in spite of making me feel uneasy. "Ain't that so, honey? How's Massachusetts?" Back then, she pretended to be in good terms with my home state and my folks. We lost that on the way.

"Ah. Picturesque landscape and lakes. I've been to many," my voice trailed off as I was trying to concentrate on the road, "where I'm from, Adams county, there's Lake Ashmere. Scenic. I went fishing with my stepfather frequently there. But Prettyboy Lake up in the north remains as one of my favorite places on earth. I paddled the Powder Falls from a dam and down to the lake as a Boy Scout."

I remember distinctly Gerard laughing at that. "Prettyboy Lake? They named a lake after me, you hear, Ma?"

"Cocky." Lana pinched her son's cheek.

Michael, who to my surprise was paying attention to what we were saying, later piped up, "Prettyboy? That's a strange name for a lake. And assuming that the locals did name it so, that's just confusing." 

"No, it wasn't named after a person, you see. A settler's horse drowned in there and its name was Prettyboy, sometime during the Civil War. That's what I got from the few locals. Earned me a badge for 'communication'," I explained, reminiscing slightly on my Boy Scout years. "Do you go to Squam Lake often?" I inquired.

"God, yes. Mother just takes us there every summer. Took us there last time she got married too, in the middle of freezing December." Then heavy silence lapsed upon us with the arrival of Gerard's remark, assuming it aggravated Lana, judging by the sideways glare she threw him. But he didn't seem to mind. And to be in my position at that moment was the worst, cause the thing is, no matter how much I tried, I couldn't come up with something to save us from the agonizing moment. My speech was hitched on my throat, my excuses useless and unwanted. My eyes glanced at his ivory hands, still tapping a rhythm on my upper chest playfully. I didn't know if I was actually irritated by his quip, but I was concerned by the effect that it had on Lana. When I looked over at her, failing to do so discreetly, she seemed to be rather riled up, if anything. Nothing was hinting at anguish on her face. She slowly opened the window on her side, then lit a cigarette and placed it at the corner of her lips. 

Piling up all of our memories together, she did that only when she wanted to ramble or was growing uneasy. "It's because we own property there, Gerard. Besides, your grandmother would be glad to know we're still spending time in the cabin. She and my father spent half their lives putting it together for us."

Lana had never spoken of her own mother. I'd spent a fairly good amount of time yakking about mine, but I didn't recall her doing so about hers. 

"Oh, Frank, have you seen a water witch before?" the elder Way exclaimed all of a sudden, oblivious, indifferent, and I let out a laugh. Light atmosphere dawning on us again. Relief settling on my no more constricted chest.

"A what now?"

"It's a  _Podilymbus Podicep,_ Gerard," said the youngest in a mocking tone.  And my smile grew as I observed Lana flashing one at me as well. She had eased up. She rather scared me when she got angry.

"Boys!" she spoke over the two, laughing, as her sons had begun using profanities and poking and pestering each other.

***

I waited for her to fall asleep on my chest first. She seemed to be a soundless sleeper, I'd perceived from the beginning of our days. The TV set on the dresser opposite us was still on, so I got up warily to fumble for the remote and turn it off, but as soon as I got there, it dawned on me that I was not tired in the slightest. My desire for photography was awakened, unexpectedly, but as it always is with those things. Thus, I grabbed my camera from the dresser. I could look at last week's work, go through it and maybe take a few pictures outside. And I stared at Lana, sleeping, folded arms across her chest, and smiled faintly before leaving the bedroom to descend the stairs, heading toward the kitchen. On my way, however, I got distracted by the illuminated wall across the living room and peered in to look for the switch to turn the lights off—I didn't know how Lana reacted to these small things, but I would want to avoid any kind of backlash-causing detail at any costs for now.

Never mind that, I was intercepted and, might I add, frozen at the doorway. At first, I fretted that a stranger was in the spacious room, but as I took a few hesitant steps forth, my mind went blank at the sight of the elder Way brother on the couch, sprawling and stretching on the sofa, a magazine on his lap. The clock showed three in the AM. But his giggles fleeted through the room and reverberated—exuberant and loud. He obviously didn't care about waking up his mother. His arms and overall so much of skin was exposed, as he was just in his regular shorts and a white shirt that failed to cover his stomach, making me only feel awry, like I'd seen something I shouldn't have. He was zoned out, too much into skimming through his magazine to notice me.

I didn't want to startle him but I spoke up anyway and tried to sound nonchalant by clearing my throat, making him aware of my presence first. "It's late, don't you think?" I was struggling to sound non-parental as it was not my area. The smile didn't dissipate from his face and it sort of pacified me. He hummed a response that I couldn't deduce much from. "You've done your bed, I suppose. Aren't you tired?"

"I love nighttime," he laughed blithely like a child, in a way that I couldn't tell if he was faking it or not. "It's the only time I'm allowed to do whatever I want because only I'm under the supervision of my own self." He rearranged himself on the sofa, turning to me. Smirking. "That is, until someone comes around and ruins it."

"There's always room for another night owl, I bet," said I and ensconced myself at the end of an armchair opposite him.

He shrugged his shoulders and fixed his shirt so that his stomach wasn't as exposed, then, patted the space next to him and pointed a finger to my camera. "Mother said something about you being an artist. Now, I wouldn't have thought she tolerated art, but guess you must've changed her mind. May I see?"

I hadn't realized that I ignored what he'd said, until I had actually done it. He was bitter, trying to get re-accustomed to his mother being married. To having someone else in the house. That's how I justified it at the time and smiled affably. Raising an index to indicate patience, I left and came back with a box of a few of my recent works that were actually worth something as he looked my way with astonishment. 

"I thought you were an amateur," he mumbled and leafed through a couple of photographs in the box.

"Even if I was considered as an amateur," I began with the serious tone I used when speaking of my work, "I still love it, I make money off of it, and I meet lots of great people through it. If my work did strike one as amateurish, I wouldn't give a damn."

Gerard smirked in an interesting way, his eyes falling steadfast on picture after picture. "Damn right, old man. These look professional."

"Who're you calling old man, kid?I'm thirty-one and full of life, mind you," feigning contempt, I said. His smile seemed to fade at the mention of the latter and I couldn't help but wonder if it was something I'd said. 

"You're thirty-one?" he huffed.

"And full of life, mind you." I hoped to revive his smile which I only partially managed. The new one was ebbing as his brows drew together. 

"And you don't mind my mother being forty-five?"

I shook my head slowly but with certainty. Not a tiny bit did I mind, and surely, she didn't care either, considering that she'd agreed on marrying me. I dropped my gaze to his lap and stared at a magazine he had, blankly. His bare knee was touching mine as he moved it to and fro, friskily.

Looking at him, able for the first time to do so, Gerard was an undoubtedly good-looking young man. That I could admit. It made me wonder what Lana's first marriage was like, what the man's name was, his age, his experiences. Even though I knew that her first husband had left and remarried, I still didn't comprehend the fact that one could abandon his children. 

Gerard was simply sublime. He had a fearfully radiant smile. Striking hazel eyes. Smooth skin. 

If I ever were to have a son, I think it's fair to say, he would probably look half as beautiful as Gerard and I would still be sufficiently proud. But had Gerard been my son, I would brag.

"What're you reading?" 

He snatched the magazine just when I discovered a piece of paper in the middle of the page and got a wide grin from him in response that revealed his entire top row of white teeth. 

"Mind your own business, dabbler," he waved a sardonic hand at me and scooted over on the couch, away from me, holding his magazine close to his body. "I wasn't reading the magazine, anyway," he said when I finally managed to sneak a glance at the cover. It was this month's Hit Parade, with the faces of The Allisons on the cover, and all I could think of was Are You Sure? playing on the radio on our drive to the cabin. Playing on a jukebox in some pub I used to crash in, in New York. 

"Fine, keep it. If it's not a billet-doux that's all about my dreamlike, hazel eyes, then I don't want it," I teased and he rolled his eyes lightheartedly. "Let's go back to my art and me."

"Oh, you  _artists._ Where did my mother find you?" the young pursed his lips and smile was gone. He dropped his gaze to the box of photographs and started looking through them with a face. "She doesn't even like art."

I didn't recall Lana ever telling me that. Presuming that he was lying, I went ahead and inquired calmly, "What's wrong with art?"

"Do you want me to opine on the imbecility of it?" he said with boldness.

"I'd like to see you try," I announced and he sat back on the couch, deflating with a sigh. I focused on his chest as it rose and fell steadily. He played with a loose thread on his shirt.

He broke into a smile again. "Well, then, that's too bad. I have nothing to say. I enjoy art, to be honest." He took a photograph in his hands and stared at it. "As for your art, I can only praise you for your prowess." Satisfied, I didn't have anything else to say. I simply laid back with my arms folded across my chest and observed him mildly and wordlessly criticizing my work, as I thought to myself about how the kid would do great as a critic. He'd piss the artists off less too. His appearance was rather calming than scolding, unlike the other snobbish critics. When it comes to reviewers, I absolutely despise them. The kid, not so much. 

"Would you say that you have a keen eye for detail, Gerard?" I asked, catching him off guard as he frowned. 

He laughed. "What is this, twenty-one questions?"

"Isn't it 'twenty questions'?" 

"Might have been like that, back in your day," he countered with an impish smirk. 

"I'm not old."

We lapsed into a silence that I liked to think of as invigorating, rather than heavy and uncomfortable. The silence didn't break, even when I discovered that the youngest Way brother was still awake as he came downstairs to get himself a glass of water. Gerard and I went through an entire album of pictures, and toward the end, I could tell that he was becoming more and more interested by the way he slouched and widened or narrowed his eyes at each photograph. However, my body was protesting against fatigue. My eyelids began to feel heavy. I proposed going to bed and promised to show the rest to him another time. 

"Goodnight," I called from the doorway and waited until he'd gotten up to ensure that he was going to bed. His eyes roved around, lively and sleepless.

"Night, mister," he replied and I froze just when I was going to leave. 

"Kid. Call me Frank. Just Frank."

He squinted at me and I replayed the moment in my head to see if I had said something wrong. 

"If you stop calling me kid, I will," said he, a laugh escaping him during his pause, " _Just Frank_."

We lingered there for a moment, I, waiting for anything and nothing at all at the doorway. He, scratching the back of his head, looking over me, ambiguously. His lips yielded, formed a half-smile as he turned his stocky frame and looked more as if he was going to gallivant once I had left, not go upstairs to sleep in his bed. Extempore, I wanted to do just the same. But as well he may, because I could not allow myself to fall asleep on the couch, as my wife had been sleeping upstairs. I turned away despite myself and did not miss the peremptory streak in his tone as he said, "Night, Frank." I merely came to a hilt until I had let the words sink in. 

How did I not know that things, one day, would take such a strange turn, I still wonder to myself today.


	3. Chapter 3

"I'm thinking about a little excursion," Lana had announced at the table when her youngest son, her, and I were having breakfast. She threw me a fleeting glance and pairs of eyes proceeded to dart around the room. Wavering. Thoughtful. "Now, if Gerard ever wakes up—" she paused there and I got that as a hint.

"Should I go wake him up soon?" said I.

She sighed and gave me a smile. "If you'd be so kind, after you've finished eating, honey."

As she had told me about her plans earlier this morning, I turned to her youngest son and asked, before taking a sip from my coffee, "Michael, what do you think about fishing?"

Lana threw me an ambiguous look and giggled.

"Fishing, you say?" the young one asked and I nodded. "I think it's unintentionally cruel when people fish for fun and not for necessity," he began, looking down at his food and not at me, "it's mere cruelty if it's for fun, and not fun at all. Do you know what happens to fish when you take them out of the water?" I shook my head, slightly regretting asking in the first place. I heard Lana beside me giggle heartily again. "Their body weight crushes their internal organs. In their natural environment, they are not subjected to gravity. Whether they recover from this? Well, in many situations, they seem to be exhausted and eventually swim away once released, even though they could easily run directly into the mouth of a predator immediately afterward because they can no longer outrun them. Or they die from injuries shortly after. It's just cruel, you see."

I was left staring at him with my mouth slightly agape, wondering what I'd asked in the first place, because the kid's words were rather hypnotizing. He paid no mind to me and proceeded to eat his breakfast.

"How about flower picking then?" I suggested moments later, hoping I hadn't done a mistake of the same fashion.

"Flower picking's nice," he shrugged, in spite of my surprise, "I can make nice wreaths."

Lana placed her hand on mine. "You should grow to love flowers, Frank. Mikey here loves them; he can name most of them."

Mikey raised an eyebrow at his mother. "I want to be a botanist, mother, what do you expect?"

"A botanist, huh?" said I.

"A botanist," he repeated, firm, stern look on me, "is there anything wrong with that?"

"No, not at all. Quite the contrary. If you want to pursue that professionally, I could introduce you to my friend, Ray. He's a botanist, four years of college. A compiler of flowers or something. Now, I can't promise anything, but he's always gushing about that one time he became a mentor, and probably is willing to do it again," I explained, and as I did so, it dawned on me that I hadn't called Ray since my wedding night and felt chagrin seeping into me. Not that he would pick up the telephone immediately; with the new baby and all, he shunned me quite frequently. But that seemed to be the beginning of the end with Raymond and me.

The younger Way looked at me with astonishment and pointed a finger at himself. He banged his hand on the table and smiled widely. "I'm a compiler of flora! Fuck! I've got three scrapbooks, all completed!"

Even though I paid no mind to it and only smiled, Lana clicked her tongue and scolded, "Language, Michael."

"Far out! You should introduce me! I totally need a mentor!" Michael ignored his mother and went on, enthusing about botany and further on the study of flora, meanwhile, Lana gave me a peck on the cheek and asked me to go wake her teenager so that he could join us, late, at breakfast. Still internally fussing over my friend, Ray, I ascended the stairs and immediately, stopped when I discerned a mellow sound. 

Music.

I honed in, only to realize that it was coming from the elder Way brother's room, swiftly recollecting that he'd begged his mother to let him bring his records along, even though I was the one that wound up carrying them, all five records. The album playing, however, was by The Crickets. Now what was really fascinating to me was how the young one could sleep while listening to rock'n'roll that makes you want to get up and dance away. 

The door was left ajar, so I didn't make the effort to knock before stepping into the room.

And he lay, sleeping on his stomach. He had splayed his body on the single-bed, the slovenly sheets covering his left leg and the small of his back. For a while, I remained staring at him from the door for any movement, or I was awaiting him to wake himself up. The light was like an embellishment in the room, not what embellished it; as if the sun had been boring its eyes, steadfast gaze on him. 

The longer one stares in those situations, the deeper one falls. His exposed, alabaster skin. The more I felt compelled to slap myself and snap out of it. The more I feel today the rue, sipping into me. Strands of his jet black hair covered his eyes, but from looking at the rest of his face, I could tell his features were much softer, serenity plastered across his expression.

I walked over to his bed and kind of bumped his shoulder lightly; an inefficient method to wake him, I admit. After a few muffled groans and more of my attempts, he turned and lay on his back, rubbing his tired eyes, and this time I knew I had woken him. How peculiar it all was! Looming over him and struggling to wake him without disturbing him too much.

"I wasn't asleep," he claimed, smirked mischievously. I walked out of the room after having told him to get up once again, I knew I had to leave the room. I came to a halt at the doorway, however, looking at him over my shoulder. I'd told him to get into some clothes and come downstairs for breakfast, but he just sat on the edge of his bed and stared at me as I left.

"Does lolling on your bed all day long sound more fun to you than a day outside?" I asked. He shrugged his shoulders and continued to look at me intensely. I tried to inject more enthusiasm into him, not knowing if it was futile or not, "Come on, we're gonna go flower picking."

"Far out," he mocked. "I bet Mikey suggested that, huh?"

"Well," I tried again, unduly, may I add, "we'll find something that works for you too, I'm sure. Get dressed, come downstairs."

***

When my stepfather entered our family, he had certain expectations about what his role should be. He'd discussed it sufficiently with my mother, and at times when I would eavesdrop on their conversations, I'd hear my mother say that I needed the sought-after right father figure. Funnily enough, I'd never mentioned that to her. I didn't think I needed anything in my life. I was perfectly fine as a child. But when I entered Lana's family without ever having a single conversation on the matter, she told me that I didn't need to be the father of her children. Her sons met up with their father, they didn't need a substitute. Fatherly love was not my  _duty_ , so to say, but I'd deemed it was rather my pleasure to provide it. I felt the need to attend that family's every need, from the moment she'd decided to introduce me to the kids. So, I gave my best to indirectly offer, if not straight-off provide my help, where Lana's children needed it. I'd expressed my commitment quite sufficiently up to then, I like to think, and was inclined to continue to do so.

Her youngest, Michael, hadn't turned me down nor showed any hints of not wanting me until then. He was talkative and expressed a flattering amount of interest in my narrations of voyages, people I had come upon, art and whatnot. The kid looked genuinely enthralled; nobody ever had looked at me with such fascination burning in their eyes before at the time. Likewise, I returned my attention to him and listened intently to him ranting about plants as we walked alongside the lake. Lana was smiling at the sight of us from afar, I could tell, and every time we'd stop, I'd give her my warmest of smiles.

Her eldest son, however, had once again been difficult. Instead of spending time with us and conversing along in the greenhouse, as we moved to have tea, he picked up a book and only spoke when spoken to. That agitated me the most, that perhaps I was not competent enough for him. But in no way would I let that show. Who knows what the kid went through, after Lana's past-marriages. 

I once wrote to my friend Robert before marrying Lana: _'I still to this day do not understand how some people don't get the sanctity of marriage, the sacredness of a bond. How can one, after having been through so much with a certain person, even bring oneself to perpetrate such terrible acts (infidelity, in particular, is the one I have feared and come upon in my life) that will ledge the relationship to an ignominious end Moreover, what callous, ludicrous person would do that to a mother of two?'_

I know better than to speak nowadays.

But all trouble was gone for us, I seemed to think. We dined inside the house at eight, due to the bad turn in the weather, which was unexpected for a summer. Everyone seemed pretty beat after our day out, apart from myself and well, Gerard, who hadn't bothered to participate all that much. Silence prevailed as we ate, until he had to make an announcement.

"I need to be back home on the 24th."

I saw confusion flash on top of Lana's expression, as she put her fork and spoon down and stared at her eldest son. "But you start school on the 29th. You've still got a week and a half."

"Is everything alright?" I threw a glance at him and asked. He did look back at me but then turned to his mother.

He looked at her, ambiguously. "You know the letter I got just before we took off? I got to read it only yesterday. Clara's brother's getting married. You know."

Disquietude dissipated from Lana's face as she gave her son a smirk and continued eating, as if she'd gotten the hint. My question remained neglected. I was mystified but didn't speak. "Oh, what we do for that girl," I heard Lana say but Gerard's expression remained dull and uninterested as he picked on his food and lifted his shoulders.

"That's unfair," the younger Way stated and put down his food, scowling. "You'll let Gerard go to spend time with his part-time girlfriend he gives half a damn about, but Ican't go back earlier to—"

Lana put on a face of disapproval. "Michael! How dare you!"

The youngest looked over at his brother as if he was seeking confirmation or something, but his brother didn't lift his gaze to look at him.

"So, you'll let me drive back?" Gerard looked up at Lana with a glimpse of hope that even I knew was about to be crushed.

"I can't let you drive alone, Gerard. You don't have a permit."

The boy looked eager to think of something as he bit his lip. "Uncle Will? What about him? Hanover is not that far, right? He still lives there. Right?" 

What I happened to know was that aforesaid person had suffered cardiac arrest a while ago, as my wife had told me. And as I had predicted, Lana shook her head: "Letting a patient drive would be as dangerous as letting  _you_  drive. The drive is an hour and a half, Gerard, I can't do that. I'm sorry."

I looked between them, considering, and finally settled on actually saying something. My glance at Lana was one to warn, and when she smiled at me, I thought she might agree. My eyes met Gerard's before the pendulum on an unobtrusive grandfather clock in the background had the time to move. Briskly and simultaneously, we looked away. "I can offer a ride," I proposed. 

The younger one cast his eyes at his mother for confirmation, perking up. Her smile was broad. "I'll mull over it, even though it's on such short notice," she said and winked at me slyly to get the hint. "If Gerard comes along to the lake tomorrow, maybe I'll lighten up. I reckon I'll do."

"I will, I swear! I'll even do the dishes," he promised and bit his bottom lip, throwing a sneering look at his brother. "Thanks. Thank you, thank you." He got up and kissed his mother's cheek before starting to clean up but Lana stopped him at the door with a disapproving 'tut-tut'. She then nodded at me, not-so-subtly, though I didn't particularly mind that he hadn't acknowledged me. In the end, I was just thankful that his attitude toward me hadn't been condescending.

"Thank you," said he.

"You're very welcome, Gerard," I replied and watched him go, listening to Michael and Lana who had already digressed from the topic.

Darkness encroached, night fell, and after playing cards with the younger Way and Lana, she and I returned to our bedroom, conversing lightly as she got ready for bed. For a while, I sat on the edge of the bed and watched her admiring herself on the mirror, taking her earrings off, planning to keep on doing so for a long time. "I think it will do him good, you know?" she said. "Maybe this is the way. He will comprehend that you're a part of us now, gradually. He seems more and more fine with it as days go by, don't you think?"

I nodded quickly when she looked at me. And all sorts of things that fleeted through my mind, rolled off my tongue.  _Gerard, you mean? Yeah. I mean, I can completely understand how he feels. I'm not willing to rush anything. I want to make him feel like I'm going to be there for him, you know?_

"That's very sweet of you. I love the fact that we're settling together so fast. It's all going great. Couldn't be better." She smiled. "You don't mind that I'm going to be three days away from you with Michael, right? My father is coming up to visit on the 24th. That's okay with you, isn't it, love?" I nodded vehemently. Definitely was. I could do without any interrogations from my father-in-law. On our wedding night, he couldn't shut up. The man talked a blue streak. "You're a sweetheart," she walked over to me and pecked me on the lips, even though I was going for a lingering kiss. I observed as she went over to her side of the bed. She closed the light, and curled up beside me, her hand reaching out to hold mine.


	4. Chapter 4

The mindset that I had adopted since I set my foot in that family suited me rather nice. So I like to believe.

I rang my best friend, Ray, right before our outing to the lake and I'd like to emphasize on the way he called me an 'all-set family guy' after I'd told him of my days in the Way's cabin, and he'd laughed, exaggerating a drawn-out 'man' that made me hanker back to our college days. Then, I was violently dragged into reality again when I heard his two-year-old son crying hysterically in the background and Ray hurried to hang up. We hurled goodbyes to each other that you could hear our smiles through. Funny thing, Ray, he always had been, but never in such an ostentatious way. Recalling now, the conversations we had had back in the day as freshmen, Raymond had always hinted at wanting to make his own family, from early on.

I encountered Michael in the kitchen, who, strangely, seemed to be preparing breakfast, so I joined him.

I had noticed that his elder brother had once again stayed up late, therefore I wasn't surprised when he made an appearance at the exact moment that the clocked showed twelve, midday. By then, we were all just lounging around the table, watching the boy with the disheveled black hair drink his coffee. Shortly after, Michael made it known that he was beginning to feel bored, waiting around for his brother to finish his coffee, so he left the table and Lana joined him upstairs to his room to help him find something suitable for the weather to wear. Thus, I was once more left with the reserved teenager. His scruffy appearance in the mornings was something that concurred with his carefree and breezy attitude. I think I'm speaking for everyone that had the luck to meet him when I say that he was no fool to accede to my attempts at making small-talk, though I did not quite understand why.

"It's something unoriginal and it ticks me off when people try to tempt me to play along," he'd said after I asked him whyhe was so against it. "I mean, don't pretend you give a damn about how I slept last night or how I am this morning, it doesn't get me fooled. My last night's sleep; why would it be anyone's business but mine?"

Trying to spot a fault in what he had made a maxim, I inquired, "But what if someone is unduly curious to learn if you'd had a good night's sleep or how you're feeling this morning? Say you were feeling sick yesterday, I would want to know if you're still feeling sick."

His brows lifted simultaneously. "I'm an honest person. I don't hide anything. If something's so bad, I can't endure, I'll tell the nearest person at once."

Hearing that, I narrowed my eyes and rested my chin on my hand. "What about the little things?"

A sardonic wave of the hand he made assured me of his indifference. "Little things are trivial. They don't matter," he claimed. I didn't bother to tell him that he's contradicting himself right there, but I pondered it deeply. If you take the time to notice the little things, as an honest person, you'd have to tell, otherwise, it means that you're hiding it. Nowadays, it makes me wonder how it would've played off if I had told him so.

My thinking was interrupted when he flashed a sweet smile and laughed blithely, staring down at his lap. I couldn't hide my smile even if I tried, for his was contagious.

"It depends on what you perceive as little, doesn't it?" said I, in a compromising manner.

"That's right. Good, you're on the right track. To some people, nothing seems little or trivial."

I nodded, agreeing even though he didn't ask for my opinion, and said, "That sounds a bit like me."

"What do you perceive as little?" asked he. I merely lifted my shoulders, sort of inadvertently, waiting in a short silence to see what he was driving at as he levered himself upright on his seat and said, "Do you ever thoroughly study people? Like, when they're not looking, they think nobody's looking, and you can see their true selves?" He paused to consider: "And then realize that nothing they do is trivial, and every move of muscle they make matters?"

For a moment, I was convinced he was alluding to something. Then he looked away from me with a sigh when it was too late for me to give an answer. There was an ambiguous, heavy silence, incense like the smell of stale buns, until Lana's yell came from upstairs, "Gerard, you have not made your bed! I asked you if you had made your bed!"

He levered himself upright and groaned before complaining, "You told me to make my bed! Never said I had." He left his seat opposite me temporarily to get up and turn the music up from the lounge, suppressing his mother's high voice. Then, began to tap his fingers on the table, humming.

I did not know, then, why I was still there and not upstairs, getting dressed, but when I looked down at my half-empty coffee mug, I decided it was a pity to throw it away, so there I remained seated, sometimes glancing out of the window, admiring the venerable greenhouse that was visible. Lana had recounted the story of how her father had constructed it by himself when she was younger, and I'd be a liar, had I said that I was not in complete awe of him. The young Gerard produced a pen, presumably to write upon the pieces of paper on the table. He was humming along to the song playing softly from the living room.

I didn't stop myself from observing him, as he did not take notice of me. Either he was privy to this and took it as a compliment, or he was lost in thought. I began to study him like I never had before. All in all, he looked nothing like his mother. Lana's skin was somewhat olive, tannish, and against her blonde hair, it gave her a Mediterranean look, in contrast to her son, who had ivory, porcelain-like skin, so that every time a tint of rose spread over his face, it was stark and strikingly detectable. It was obvious, by how much he exposed his skin, that he didn't mind the disparity. Quite the contrary, he seemed to be showing it off, that he was unalike.

Head was slightly tilted to the side, his bottom lip in his mouth as he was biting it, and when the sun was in the perfect angle, it seemed to concentrate on exactly the right features of his face, as he wrote, and wrote, and wrote. I found myself unable to avert my gaze for a moment, but when I was shaken out of that almost catatonic state, I gave myself an inquisitive, criticizing look and decided that I should leave him be, to write without being under close scrutiny.

I abandoned my seat and joined my wife in the living room who was still admonishing the young Gerard for dumping his books here and there. Everywhere, there was that name. Gerard, this. Gerard, that. Etched on the thickness of the air. Gerard did not bother bothering.

The time we spent at the lake was, as I remember, splendid. Lana and I took a little walk around by ourselves, arm in arm, while the boys stayed behind, gazing at a paddling of ducks by the pond. We chatted lightly as we returned, spoke of our plans about the next few days together in the cabin—or rather she spoke and I listened, but it doesn't matter, because I loved her dulcet voice. I used to so much cherish listening to her. We sat on a swing bench and gazed at the view, engrossed. The sun shone on the lake; the radiant glow scintillated and beamed on the surface. The ducklings strolled alongside the water, the butterflies danced around, lurking a way off in the shadows of the blooming trees. All these things I wish I could gaze at for a little longer, before my attention was riveted by him, whom I watched laying on the celadon-green grass, reading his book.

 _Gerard, this. Gerard, that._ The fact that he didn't reciprocate a glance, even though he often lifted his chin to look around, indicated that I was not a part of his world yet. Yet I was transfixed, even as an onlooker, to know what his world looked like. My only guess would be idealistic, considering that he was not a part of  _this_  world yet.

He was out of it.

But I would be a liar if I said that I wasn't taken aback when he looked back at me. The corner of his eyes wrinkled as he formed his mouth into a radiant smile. No reason hid in that stretching of his lips, that beaming.

The following week flew by unbelievably fast. I spent most of it creating romantic memories with my wife, while also managing to spend productive time with the children, as I felt it were my duty to do so. Before I knew it, the 24th was clawing at my back. 

"You've got everything, dear?"

I mumbled that I did, fumbling in my left pocket for a scrunched up note she'd given me. "It's all good. There, I'll ring you as soon as we arrive—"

"I'm not worrying at all, honey, if that is what you have in your mind," she clarified, adjusting the neck of my button-up. "But I won't be able to pick it up when Daddy's here. He hates it when I interrupt conversations to pick up the phone."

"Great—I mean, okay. Fine."

She smiled warmly and threw a few wary glances around, for a reason I was not yet aware of. Lastly, she said, almost secretly, "Just don't let Gerard drive, no matter how much he begs you to." I looked at her right in a 'who do you think I am' way. Her eyebrows lifted. "Also. Do me a tiny favor. Please check on him before he goes to Clara's brother's wedding. Christ, don't let him go in shorts, Frank, please. We have a reputation to protect. I don't want him to look like the youth rebellion has taken over."

A glance to my side and I noticed him walking toward us with his suitcase, wearing a white v-neck and beige shorts.

Swiftly, I averted my gaze when he caught on my staring.

"Anything else?" I asked Lana, this time, trying to give her a hint with an impish look. She leaned forward and kissed me, and we exchanged 'I love you's, as the teenager remained there, staring at us blankly in a way that actually made me momentarily uncomfortable.

"Don't let him go like this to the wedding, Frank. We still have an image to protect in our neighborhood," Lana felt the need to repeat to me, nodding at her son.

"Will do." 

Clearly, I hadn't had the time to appreciate the magnitude of what she'd told me. I didn't see why I couldn't let him go to a wedding the way he wanted to dress, but then again, it sounded very much like something my mother would scold me about, too. Maybe he didn't look elegant, but he didn't fail at looking strikingly good. 

"See you in a few days," I reassured her and gave her a peck on the lips before taking off for the car. She watched us from afar, alone, since the younger Michael didn't mind attending our leaving. Before slumping into the car, I gave her a wave. 

Gerard made the decision himself to take the passenger's seat, and I did not speak out against it. I did make him wear his seat belt, however. He seemed to have something to say to me about that the first seconds but let it go. Five minutes of driving later, I noticed the smile on his face and focused on it.

"How come you're so pleased with the idea of going home?" I wondered. "I would've given everything to avoid going back to school when I was your age. Did that change among the teenagers as well?"

"No, it didn't. I just happen to despise that cabin."

"I don't see why," I admitted but he shrugged evasively, so my first thought was to veer. "I reckon you're giddy with excitement to see your girlfriend, huh?" To this information I was introduced to by Lana; reliable or unreliable source, I ventured to pretend as if it were reliable, nevertheless. He shrugged, much to my disappointment. "How long have you two been together then?" 

"It's complicated. You wouldn't understand."

"I wouldn't?" My puzzlement was genuine and evident in my tone. He hummed an affirmative response. "Don't suppose you want to elaborate?"

"I see no point in doing so," he stated with firm certitude that I had to hold myself back not to confute. I heard the sound of pages being riffled and I rotated my neck to see his gaze fallen down onto the book on his lap. Thus, I made no further attempts at reviving the conversation, mostly because I fretted repercussions. Later on, he insisted on turning up the radio, and so I did. His silent humming started again which pacified my thoughts of talking again. As if he didn't mind my anterior prying.

He lifted and rested his feet on the dashboard, and I told him nothing. He opened the window, and I told him nothing. Then, closed it again when the sunny day degenerated into a rainy, gloomy one. He sang softly along to the radio in a high-pitched tone, and I called him Snow White in a whisper, making him snort with mock derision at my mock wit. And in the end, it was all worth the wait, to let him do anything his heart desired. Because in the end, he seemed—even if it's a tiny bit more—accepting of my presence.

***

How little we adults know about adolescents is unspoken. Perhaps it is and shall remain that way because us adults are embarrassed about it. And yet to think that, once in our lives, we were all like them. Quickly developing. Extremely opinionated. Too zesty. Yet at times emotional rebels. I don't know how many of us had had stepfathers or stepmothers. I have, however, had one before, and become one. I do not recall my father being so careful with me as I had been with the two Way sons. My father was a hoary, scrawny man from Massachusetts, like my mother, with little soul left in him; tired after having served many years in the military, traumatized by the terrors of the war. Not much of him is stored in my memory; he died a few weeks after my sixth birthday.

My stepfather, however, was another story. Old Glenn was from Kansas. With him, I spent many more jolly Christmases and birthdays. He'd regularly take me fishing or canoeing, but never did he ever sit beside me to talk about my murky mind and my fleeting, bottled-up feelings. 

I had decided I didn't want to be that stepfather.

The fact was that Gerard was subtly refusing to accept that from me. He cooked for us both while I was unpacking and ventilating the rooms of the house. And as I gaped at him from the doorway, he simply gave me a smile of little effort and served us both. It was then that I was done realizing; he was no child. He was a boy, yes; but practically, he was an almost grown man. That is how I saw him.

The afternoon skulked around, I only then seemed to be reminded of my wife's words, that I should 'not let him go to the wedding dressed like that'. He didn't seem to protest against my attempts to usher him upstairs to find him something suitable to wear.

"You don't happen to have a blazer, do you? What happened to the one you wore at our wedding?"

He shrugged his shoulders and looked around his room for a while. "Rental."

There was no time for that. "You are going to have to borrow mine then." We moved to Lana's and my bedroom, and I extracted a bunch of clothes hangers and dress shirts, from which I picked out the tan after having looked at him. He blinked at me and stared down at the teal shirt he'd chosen from his closet.

"I don't think Ma would agree with that, Frank," he laughed and pointed a finger at the tan shirt. He was, indeed, right. I could imagine Lana freaking out. But I explained to him that it brought out his eyes, and eventually, he did not fight me on that. He said he would wear it.

However, I didn't expect him to change right there in front of me, but I paid no mind to it. He turned his back and unbuttoned the teal shirt he was wearing. The amount of time it was taking him to change made it seem like he wanted to stall. Or perhaps it was just me, because of the valiant effort it took me not to stare at him. His skin was unblemished. The slight, beautiful sway of his hips, and the two identical indents on the lower area of his back, surrounded by smooth skin; his spine moving up to his shoulders blades. I had wanted to take a photograph of the unrealness of his skin; but where could I ever keep a photograph like that stowed away?

As I cast my eyes away and cleared my throat, I was lost in my head and yet not lost at all. He turned and gave me a risen eyebrow that accelerated my heartbeat, as it made me think that I'd been caught in the act. 

And before I had the time to conjure up an excuse, he giggled, "I don't believe I have to ask you to go answer?"

"Huh?" was my stupid, short response before I heard the doorbell ring. I rushed downstairs, leaving him in the bedroom. I was striving to remember what his girlfriend was called. 

Then when I opened the door I was met with an amiable, youthful smile of a blonde girl in a tan, A-line dress. Now that I remember: thank God, I'd told him to pick the tan shirt. I'd called it.

"Hello-o, Mr. Rambling!" Her smile dissipated and confusion flashed on top of her expression. I shook my head slowly and she tilted her head to the side, realizing: "Oh! I'm sorry! Silly me. You're the new Frank. Oh, gassed. Oh, I'm full of it today, I'm sorry...Mr. Frank Iero?" 

"Yes, don't worry about it. You must be Clara? Come in, Gerard is getting ready, he will be with you shortly," I announced, unaffected by her statement, and let her come inside. There was no need to usher her into the living room as she seemingly knew the structure of the house. She perched herself carefully without ruining her dainty appearance on the sofa and I offered after a minute of silence, "Can I bring you something to drink or eat?"

She gave me a relieved look. "Oh, just water would be great, Mr. Iero, thank you. My throat's as dry as a desert."

I returned with a glass of ice-cool water and placed it in front of her, wondering how rude of me it would be if I left her by herself in the living room. I took a seat opposite her, on the armchair as she sipped at her water. "So," I began, twiddling my thumbs as I wondered what was taking Gerard so long. I grinned at her when she glanced back at me with a smile. "So, _you_  are Clara."

"Gerard hasn't told you a single thing about me, has he?" she tittered and my grin faded away. "It's okay. He doesn't tell many people. You would've met me earlier on, at your wedding, but I was on vacation in Hawaii with my family—yeah, Gerard invited me, but I got the letter a week behindhand. I hope you had a splendid time, though. My mother sent you the basket with the Château d'Yquem wine, did you get it?"

I said that yes, we did, and it was divine as pursued my lips when I found nothing else to say. The young girl's eyes darted around swiftly, somehow managing to inflate my uncomfortableness.

"We've known each other since we were kids, Gerard and I, I mean," she announced and smiled; kept staring at me expectantly. "He never told you that?" I shook my head. "Well, that's a very Gerard thing. Naturally," said she, smile fading and turning into an acrimonious glare to the floor. "We've been together for a year now. But if you ask him, he'll say we're 'not together and never have been'." She crossed her arms at the latter. "That's Gerard-jargon, for you."

Perhaps Gerard had been right, because my mind could not comprehend this at all. And suddenly, he came rushing down the stairs with an enthusiastic, "I'm here!" all dressed and looking singularly well. His hair was no longer unkempt, although my opinion would be that it suited him well either way. 

The girl straightened up and made her way to the door as Gerard stopped at my sight and grinned.

"What took you so long?" I inquired, studying him for any clues, until I realized that he was holding his tie out to me. I approached him, amused, and draped the tie around his neck. His eyes were locked at mine, as if he was waiting eagerly for me to meet them. 

"When—When are you going to sleep?" he asked breathlessly and I pandered to his demand, eyeing him. I inserted the wide end down through the front knot of his tie and tightened it lightly. 

"I don't know. Late, probably."

"Well, I'm not going to be that late, I promise."

"You can come as late as you please. Come back when you feel like it," I told him, adjusting the neck of his button-up and setting my hands on his shoulders. He flashed a smiled at me. It was impossible for me not to do the same.

"You're telling me to come back late?" His tone was doubtful.

"I'm telling you to have fun if you can. There's not really much to do at a wedding, is there?" His friend peeked out at us through the door frame. "Do you want me to come and pick you up?"

"No. 'S fine. Clara's returning me."

"You know it should be the other way around, right?"

"I told you it's  _complicated._ "

"Gerard," she piped up from the hallway and I heard the door open, "we need to go. We're gonna be late." 

And he put his hand on my shoulder briefly, then walked away from me with his fainted smile. I didn't do anything else but stare at him as he left, trying to conceal the fact that I wouldn't know what to do once he stepped out of the house. But I was confronted with that fact when I heard the door shut and realized that I was standing limply in the center of the room. Alone. From then and on, I tried to find ways of repressing the stifling silence in the empty household. Once by boiling water, focusing on the sound of the kettle soughing softly. Then by turning on the radio until I'd grown tired enough of the broadcaster. I occupied myself for about ten minutes in silence with my photographs that I put on the floor, scattered, and walked around them, pondering deeply. _What to sent to Robert, what does look valuable?_

We had not planned this far ahead with Lana. What I'd do when she'd be at her workplace as a fragment specialist, and the kids would be at school. My work consisted of hours and hours of long walks to seek inspiration, hours of solitude to brood over focal points of my art, plus the time to take pictures, and an additional hour that I frequently spent trying to suppress the feeling in me that derogated my work in the splendor of others'.

I only stared blankly at my work that day, thinking of the perpetual time I'd have by myself when work and school would start. I would have all the time to myself. 

The clock would stop and both hands would point at me. 

And then I would dedicate all the hours of my freedom to my work. And I would call my mother. And I would prepare lunch for my beloved family. And I would call Ray. Ray would taunt me, point out how much a family has changed me. I'd say that  _perhaps that hints at that she's the one. It wasn't stupid-Ettie. Not goddamn-Betty either. I had been waiting to run into Lana all along._

When I glanced back at the clock I came to the realization that I had been successful at killing three hours. Thus, I abandoned my pictures, headed off to the kitchen, ate, later took a shower, returned to the living room. I put on some Buddy Holly record that was laying around, I read the newspaper, and it wasn't much later until I was startled by the sound of the lock turning and the door opening.

I tilted my head and caught a glimpse of him from his reflection in the mirror. His jacket on his arm. His lips parted, looking paler than usual. He threw his keys into a bowl in the hallway and—I, still staring at him through the mirror—rested his back against the wall, letting a sigh escape his mouth. He probably thought I hadn't noticed him yet—he took his time, like he was cherishing that inertia he was in.

Finally, I caught a glimpse of him breaking into a smile. He then entered the living room where I was seated, hands in his pockets, jacket dangling from his arm.

"Champagne was cheap," he commented, smile altering to a smirk, "so, I wished the couple a happy idyllic life and trekked off."

See, that is the way to do it.


	5. Chapter 5

The next morning we would go grocery shopping. Actually, I had told him there was no need for him to come along, but he just grabbed his jacket and hurried after me, and like an unexpected but welcome guest, his frowzy figure appeared next to me.

And then as we were strolling down the neighborhood, he was ahead of me. He immersed himself in keeping his balance while walking on his tip-toes on top of perfectly cubic stones, alongside the formal and elegant parterre of some neighbor of ours he liked to mess around with—he often liked to throw pebbles at the window and bark like a raging dog. At times he would mildly lose his balance and grasp at my shoulder for support, arbitrarily spewing curse words and clicking his tongue just before a smile would surface on his lips. 

I have to admit that in my thirty-one years of life, I'd never met such a peculiar person like him before. Breezy attitude, carefree—and yet a teenager. Our first encounter had given me the absolute opposite impression; that he was hateful, condescending, cold. And it might just have been something normal at the time, but the name 'Gerard' had a different melody to it when I let it roll off my tongue. A whimsical, happy melody. And such a pretty melody. Pretty, above all.

If I could ever take a picture of a word, that would be it. Just to see what the word 'Gerard' looks like when enunciated. 

"Robert Capa?"

"Hungarian photographer during the war. Captured a total five of them actually. But he's known for his photographs during the Spanish Civil War and World War II," I said. He lost his balance momentarily again and reached out for my shoulder.

"And out of all the people on earth, in history even," he paused for emphasis as I imagined him rolling his eyes, as he did, "you would want to meet  _him_. Why, you can see his photographs. Isn't that enough? And he's probably still alive."

"Is not, actually. Died a few years ago, in fact. Stepped on a landmine while driving," I announced, moving my hand up to remove his from my shoulder and hold it on my own, but he let go at the moment he'd found his balance again. I chose to digress. "And anyway, why judge my answer when you haven't given one yet. Who would you want to meet?"

"Me?" he raised his chin to look forward, noticing that the grocery store was only a few meters away. He lowered his gaze again and answered briskly, "Good question. Edward Carpenter."

"That name rings a bell."

"Yeah, Mikey might have prattled to you about him. He had something to do with scrapbooks of flowers or whatever. Although, I would argue that that was not the crux of his career, considering he was a philosopher and a poet. I mean, come on; picking flowers is nothing compared to that. All it is is just flower-picking. Flower-killing. And viewing your victims in a scrapbook. How vile."

"You're basically saying..." my voice trailed off and he finished my sentence with his obscene: 

"Fuck flower-picking is what I'm saying."

I laughed. And I laughed again. And marched on and on, without realizing that he'd stopped behind me. 

And I did come to a halt after I had laughed once more; then, whirled around and stared at him, trying to understand why he'd stopped midway to the store. I asked him if he was coming, but he didn't move an inch. Just stared at me, frozen, with a smile plastered on his rosy lips that summery day. An inability to move surrounded my lithe body, as my eyebrows drew close, my head tilted to the side. My eyes were focused, but affixed on something I wasn't recalling ordering them to. While he was standing amidst an elegant flowerbed, adorned with the prettiest of roses and tulips that the sun stroked with its luminous beams—yet I wasn't looking at the flowers he was surrounded by. 

"You're right," I let out, slightly unable to shake my catatonia away. And I said again, "no, you're absolutely right. Fuck flower-picking."

God, Ray forgive me for the words I spoke. Flower-picking is supreme. Your thousand scrapbooks of flowers are as valuable as pearls. Dear friend, I swear. 

"What's point in it, am I right?" he said in an offhand manner and stuck his hands in his pants' pockets. 

Vehemently I nodded,, turned my back to him and marched on, hearing his footsteps getting closer and closer. And the next time he managed to reach my shoulder for balance, he'd caught me in a trance, where I started as if I didn't believe it was really him.

He would follow me to the store's front, where he would stumble upon some friend of his from school, by chance, and I would leave him there. And his perky voice would echo in my mind as I would walk into the store to do the shopping for the house by myself.

And I would walk out of the store, with two bags of groceries in my hands. I would stare at him smoking in a relaxed stance. I would stare until he'd look my way. 

God, how I wished these two days ahead of us would pass fast and yet not fast at all.

***

In the late afternoon that was being encroached by some enjoyable darkness, pure and relaxing to the eye, I had somehow subconsciously agreed to pander to his demands, and joined him for what had started as a seamless card game, but developed into a digressive conversation every time we laid a card on the table. Eventually, it led to my recounting of my high school antics which I believe he enjoyed.

"I mean, I did get what they called a 'lenient punishment' but it was for the sake of having a good laugh and..." I rolled my eyes, and started laughing again. Gerard continued chuckling. Echoing in the living room, echoing in the clandestine halls of my mind. He covered his red then face from laughing with his hand and waited until he'd laughed the laughs out, filling me to the brim with strange delectation I couldn't figure out.

When he mildly looked like he'd surmounted the laugh attack, I looked down at the cards in my hand. "Right. Your turn, junior."

He glanced down at his cards. Then back up at me. He slowly extended his arm and put all his seven hidden cards on the coffee table. 

I stole a glance to my right, looking at the stack of cards, knowing he was bluffing before he'd even said, "I hold seven aces."

I even considered again, noticing that I was holding an ace of clubs. But looking at the stack of cards beside us, there was definitely an ace hiding in there. Factually, the tenets of psychology would most likely have something to say about his facial expression but I brushed them off for the time being.

"You're bluffing," I concluded confidently, looking at him from the corner of my eyes, watching the smile faint on his face when he spoke.

"Remember that we're playing with two decks."

I shook my head, unconvinced, and put my hand on the cards, as if to push them back to his hands, since I knew he was most definitely bluffing. 

And then his smile grew wider as he revealed the seven aces before my eyes. 

I puckered my lips and nodded, throwing my cards onto the table and rightly noted, "Alright, you win. I give up."

Letting out a hearty laugh, he laid back and rested his neck on the armchair behind him. "That's right. Let's just mark this in history, there," he produced a pen and wrote something on the ace of spades among others. Then, he turned around for me to see how he'd defeated me. 

'8/25' it read. And on top, three times underlined was the number five (for the times he'd beaten me) and just a plain, calligraphic, lonely 'G' on the bottom, which was his signature. I palpated the card several times, running my thumb over the dried ink, admiring his glory.

He sat back and basked in being pleased with himself. "Damn right. Now get up and go cook for me."

I laughed at him again and slumping forward, rested my chin on the coffee table, looking up with wide eyes at him. "Nah, come on, let's take it out," I said, extremely unwilling to abandon my seat.

He shook his head, folding his arms across his chest; and if he wasn't giving in to my pleading look, well, I had no strategy to make him give in. He firmly then stated, "No; pact was you'd cook if I won again."

"No—"

"Uh, yes. Yes, I believe that was our deal," he interrupted me forthwith. Fairly, because that had been our deal. But, for some reason, something had gotten into me at that moment, something that convinced me that I should stay put until God-knows-what. 

I sighed again. "Let me live a little, kid."

"Live? Huh. I don't suppose married life has sucked so much out of you already," he joked. Blithely laughed. Then leaned forward and placed his chin on the coffee table as well, looking deep into my eyes. He stared and stared. And naturally, I stared back into his eyes, gazing at some mirage in his eyes, that I had, no doubt, conjured up. A desert was hidden behind those eyes, endless. Leaving me unfairly in languor.

"I have," said he, and I unfocused from his eyes only to focus on the absurdity of what he would say next—I'm the master of foreshadowing, remember?— "this crate of beer lying around somewhere in the attic, in the refrigerator—"

"No, no, no. Most definitely not," I stopped him there, "I know for a fact that Lana doesn't like you drinking. I'm gonna get in trouble, you're gonna get in trouble. There's no way—"

"Come on," he groaned exaggeratedly, "but Mother doesn't have to know! And besides," he added with a devilish smirk, "you'll never be able to drink in this house again, with Mother being around. She despises drinkers."

I sighed once and he smiled as if he knew that I was begrudgingly easing up. Oh, he was planning it all along, wasn't he? Pretty little devil. 

"One? One beer. Just one," I clarified, lest there was some kind of misunderstanding. Bad Frank. Foolish, impetuous, inappropriate Frank. 

A grin spread across his face almost immediately. "If you insist."

You know, the strangest part in this was that I was not repenting. I, for some reason, came to the conclusion that it would give me a taste of what bachelor-life was like before. Before Lana. And before Ettie and Betty. Problem was, I wasn't really going to share my drinking hours with a college buddy of mine, but with my wife's son.

"Oh, Frank." His hands came closer to my face. At the moment that I was surrounded by confusion, he ran his fingers through my hair and ruffled it. Then, went on to say something that had me even more perplexed, "I knew you'd come around, sooner or later."

Oh, would I now?

And upstairs we went, to the attic. Left the docks of cards laying around, left his miraculous seven aces facing the ceiling on the coffee table. Left the window open. 

A hundred million things could happen throughout that time-span. For all I knew, a comet could have crushed earth. And just like that, we would be gone. 

I don't know which variant I preferred back then, to be absolutely candid. The reality of things, or a flaming celestial body crushing my home. 

I ascended the stairs after him, watching him gallop with such cheerfulness, as if stairs awakened his desire for life. On our way to the attic, he stopped to quip at me and my age, mocking my panting. I told him it was the smoking and the lack of exercise that had done this to me. He flashed a smile and the next time I saw him was when he was fumbling in the refrigerator. Meanwhile, I opened the window and breathed fresh air. The sound of crickets chirping filled the room. The starry night was looking down on me. 

Soon, he jabbed me in the side with his elbow and handed me an open beer. Almost automatically, I started rummaging with my hand in my pocket for a cigarette, taking one out and placing it between my lips, only to look to my side, where Gerard had done the same. He produced a lighter and brought it up to my face after he was done lighting his smoke. 

Crickets chirped. Makes you wonder—where they screeching in an attempt to warn me, but to no avail? Well, obviously, it was of no avail, but were they trying to warn me?

"Thank you," I mumbled in response, getting a nod. I watched his eyes roving around, before deciding to land on me—with the number of times he'd played that game of staring, I started to haphazardly guess and eventually, I started to know when he was planning to do it.

Him looking sideways at me looking sideways at him, and so not subtly mind you, was starting to give me the feeling that there was a change in the atmosphere. Something I wasn't getting.

Perhaps I did not excel at foreshadowing. Not as much as I thought I did, anyway.

He looked straight down, stands of hair covering his mouth where a smirk was plastered. 

"Surprisingly," said I, my mistake number one, "I enjoy this more than I thought I would."

He huffed a laugh and glanced around. Awkwardness? Reflection? Mystery. 

"What, us, you mean?" he replied. 

Our gazes met, causing me to marginally repent. But only marginally. 

I hunched my shoulders, feigning indifference, in addition to my sarcasm when I replied, "Eh. 'S not that bad."

He took a sip of his beer and I copied. Then, stubbing out his cigarette, turned his body to me with a momentum of someone who was up to something. I stood staring at his parted lips that seemed dark in the midst of the moonless night. Oh, moonless, did I say? Never mind. The crescent moon was concealed by filtering clouds, but I wouldn't have had the chance to catch a glimpse of it at that moment, because I completely froze when I felt his hand on my left cheek. I almost stirred at his touch. 

I didn't have the time to ask, nor to wonder, because he immediately crashed his mouth onto mine. 

I can simply thereupon justify myself by saying that thereon, I was in a trance. I was beyond. Not sure beyond what, but I certainly wasn't down on earth, was I? 

I was not rational Frank. 

I was unresponsive, frozen, clueless Frank.

His lips moved as he pressed down harder onto the kiss, if you could even call it a kiss. I was being kissed, for sure, but not participating in the activity so much. 

I simply thought he would quit, put it down after having seen that I was not reciprocating, but I'm pretty sure a minute or two had passed and he wasn't giving up. 

That's when I drew in a sharp breath and backed, before saying in a shocked, mostly-baffled, tone:

"What on earth are you doing?"

It sounded more reprimanding than I had meant for it to be.

"I thought—" he paused, studying my features possibly, and sympathizing with my agony, "well, I thought this meant you...Did I misinterpret things?"

"Yes? Quite so?" my voice dripped in irony, tone veering into anger. Unintentionally. I did many things that were not my intentions that day. What did we say? Ah, yes. Foolish Frank. The younger's face scrunched up and I could not help but feel bad. Chagrin seeping into me, as well as a new dose of bafflement. For a moment, I considered jumping off the window to give an end to this anarchy. 

"Oh, well. Sorry. Guess we can go back to drinking beer now," he concluded, waving it off as if it was nothing. 

"That's not how it works, Gerard," I pointed out. "Do you realize what you just did?"

"Technically, you're old enough to be my friend's older brother. So, when you look at it that way..."

"That's not the way to look at it. I am a man. You're a man." A moment passed without him saying anything, so I thought I would point out something else, equally as obvious and perverse. "And I am married to your mother."

He threw me a fleeting glance. "So were three or four other dudes. So what? I forget."

"Gerard," I said in a firm voice in an attempt to get his utmost, his precious attention, "I love your mother. Very much."

He scrutinized me for a long while, gave me the once over, and when he was done, his expression took the form of an acrimonious, venomous glare. His upper lip slowly lifted. I was aware that I had incensed him, and almost wanted to apologize, until I remembered what repulsive thing he'd done seconds ago. Never mind that he'd done such thing to me, his stepfather, he'd done such thing to another man. A man to _man_. I thought that was only plausible in the wildest corners of New York. 

"She doesn't have to know," he said. "So, you're married to her. So what? Marriage shouldn't prohibit. It should open a whole new world for you."

I rolled my lips, having the sudden urge to punch a wall. "This is not about marriage and what it brings along. Goddammit, Gerard. Did you even consider what havoc this could wreak?"

"Don't dwell on it."

"Lana can never know about this," I spat, raising my voice just a little. He looked at me blankly and shrugged. 

"That's exactly what I'm saying."

He left the room. Left me to bask in my misery with the vileness of myself. I smoked and did exactly that, and once I was done, completely disoriented and unaware of the time, I headed stole another beer. Headed downstairs tentatively.

Heard his bedroom door slam shut. 

Perhaps he was biding his time, looking out to take revenge on me for entering his family. And just maybe this had been the first stage of his scary undertaking.

All the energy and happiness was drained from the living-room when I stepped in. It was empty and messy and not how I remembered it being earlier.

I uncluttered, having else to do, and left my own mess contaminating every perky little thought that flitted through my head. 

Then I glanced at the aces on the table, sighing. 

I picked up the ace of spades and managed to force a pathetic half-smile on my lips, hoping that his spade, become a dagger and shear through my heart; save me from this harrowing desolation. Eventually, I was just frozen, staring at the three numbers jotted on the card and the lonely 'G' below. The only solution to escape my trance was to leave the room. Thus, I stuck the card in my pocket and left the room. 


	6. Chapter 6

Kerchief around her head, sunglasses covering her eyes, she slumped out of the car looking like an exotic Marilyn Monroe. My exotic Marilyn. She flashed a white smile as soon as she saw us, and I say us, because Gerard had decided to suddenly make an appearance—and, oh, what a surprise that his majesty made the effort. We hadn't seen each other at all since  _that_ night—I reckoned we were avoiding each other—and yet there he was, strutting out of the house as if nothing had ever happened. 

Clever thinking. I totally hadn't been thinking of him for a whole day. 

My exquisite Marilyn wife rushed to us in her black high heels and beckoned Gerard to come closer so that she could embrace us both. Simultaneously. I would prefer a separate, husband-to-wife embrace first, but who gives a damn? And then, there came the cocky commissioner; the only stud duck in his cycle. I'm talking about my father-in-law, of course, who, despite his daughter being forty, was still lurking around to keep a close watch on her. That said, he sent me a hawkish glare, hollering daggers at me as if I had done something wrong—I've been purified by holy water, you can't tell me I've not been vindicated, Leonel. And anyway, what was the bitter cat doing here? Go vent about taxes to somebody else. 

And for a moment, some kind of paranoia made me think, just for a second, that he knew. He knew about what I had done, or rather, what was done.

It was not my fault. 

"Oh, Frankie, has my Gee been getting on your nerves?" she joked, planting a kiss on my cheek. Then her son's. "Don't worry. We're carting him off to school tomorrow, and it's gonna be just us in the house from then on. My sugar pop, we're going—"

"Mother," he grunted, the grown-up that didn't want to be called an abbreviation of his beautiful name, "I really don't wanna know."

She planted another kiss on his forehead and released him from her embrace. Off he went, not giving me one fleeting glance. 

He looked like he was really trying.

"Oh, my boys," said my Marilyn, as if she was apologetic for leaving me for two days—question is, had she the option to go back in the past and alter it, would she have chosen not to let me drive her son back, just two days earlier? "My boys, how much I missed you."

***

It took a while to breathe it all in. The first week of school, the day after Leonel left us to ourselves, I cherished that alone-time with Lana at home, and we talked about whatever we hadn't talked about up to then. However, when she was required to return to her workplace, I found myself in the familiarity of the predicament, not knowing what to do with the empty house and the silence that could only be subdued by turning up the stereo or by the noise pollution emitted by our noble next-door neighbors. My thoughtfulness held me back from ringing Ray and rattle his head; his little devil eight-month-old and I.

September came just in time. And sometime around mid-September, I got the chance to put on an exhibition with another photographer friend of mine, Robert Sullivan. We got around drinking after the show, as it had been quite a success. And as I recalled Gerard telling me that Lana doesn't like drinkers, I spent the night at Robert's and tottered out the next day, midday, I daresay. Lana didn't make a big fuss out of it, but she clearly disliked it. I made a mental note in my mind.

Stars began to hide, the weather deteriorated, and dead leaves fell upon the dirty ground. The highlight of my every day was getting out of bed. That's when I got the most of the day; after that, my life felt like a perpetual waiting game. Waiting for Michael, who arrived home first. And then, I waited for Lana; food in stove, salad on the table. My camera had somehow vanished from the drawer I last put it. As for Gerard, I barely saw him, as he was meticulously making the most out of his day, hanging out and around. I began to feel so bored in that house, I actually admitted it to Lana. But I can't say that went as I had expected it to.

"Perhaps you should consider a job uptown, sweetheart," as she had remarked. "It's a good time-killer, y'know."

Me and normal jobs? I'm not ordinary. And I sure as hell cannot deal with the ordinary. Having a mere nominal job, such as a manager-consultant, would make me sound just idle. It would be an abomination to the artistic image I had striven to create. It was good for past college-Frank, but it would ultimately diminish artist-Frank.

I am rather pretentious, aren't I?

Nevertheless, the sheer hope in her tone had managed to strike a nerve within me. I had a breakthrough, first one in a while, and started snapping photographs of things other than nature. The beauty of the artificiality I was handed. Solitude. Men at work. Arbitrary things I thought I would never run out of. 

That earned me another success in mid-November with Robert. 

At Thanksgiving, Lana had the idea of having a filling the feast table, so she suggested I'd invite Robert and his wife over. She herself called one of her friends from the salon and her husband. I also invited Ray, which was a half-apologetic gesture and also, a demonstration of my pleasant marriage so far. Gerard brought his friend along, Clara—though I was dubious that Lana might have played a part in that—and young Michael decided to bring no one, because, quoting him, none of his friends respected men of color such as Indians, and he didn't want to show any gratitude toward them so long as they were racist. He even said that the one thing he is not thankful for was his friends. Ray was impressed by the young one's progressiveness. I'll say.

The dining room was filled with laughter and pleasant conversations after we'd had finished with the food and were all pretty stuffed. I had lit my cigarette and observed everyone else talking, because, naturally, the key is observation and not participation. Only he and his pig-tailed girl friend were not exchanging any words, much like I did. He was picking on his leftover food with a fork and she was staring at him intently, loudly chewing bubblegum, as if she was desperate to get his attention. 

And now, see, that is why I prefer to observe; because I cannot miss little things. For instance, I would've totally not noticed how she rolled her eyes at him and looked away, aggravated, when he had turned to ask her, "What now?" Had I taken part in the conversation Robert's wife was having with Lana and Ray's wife, I would never know why the young girl got up in such an abrupt manner and excused herself, announcing that she had to leave. 

And with her seat empty, the light seemed to focus on just  _him_. The room felt like it should be empty for him, but it was not.

His head was askew on his neck, his eyes darting around and landing on people, inquisitively; in that way, he almost reminded me of a little boy in confusion. But his full lips and prominent cheekbones only underlined the proof that he was almost a grown man. 

Suave and endearing up until the point when he comes too close to you, and then all hell breaks loose. Because he did get just a bit too close to me, and I'd be a knave if I did not admit that I wanted him a little bit closer too.

It was strange to me, how Ray and Michael could discuss and obsess over botany and flowers, when  _he_  was sat opposite them on the table. The most beautiful flower of them all; thriving, blossoming. 

What a pretty boy.

And—gaze lifting, face glowing—the pretty boy would eventually steal a glance to me and flash a smile with no reason whatsoever, but so much meaning.

***

"What a charmer, that Robert," Lana made known as she and I were cleaning up the post-feast table. I mumbled an affirmative answer, hardly remembering the woman's she was alluding to face. "And Ray, how sweet of him to propose to take Mikey to the college he teaches."

"Well, he is a little bit of a braggart," said I, huffing a dry laugh. "Actually, he is a big braggart. Expect a lotta boasting. He's not gonna leave Michael alone now that he's found an admirer."

"Well, perhaps he will help him figure out what he wants to do after high school. What an affectionate father. Lively little gal that wife of his, too," she said, scooping out all the leftover salad from the bowl. "Now that I mentioned college, say, Frankie. Could you help Gerard with his letter to Brixton College? He's having a hard time doing it on his own, he's always stalling it."

I waited for a moment of reflection that never dawned on me. Whether it was a good idea, to reply in an instant, "Of course," I didn't know. I didn't know many things when  _he_  came in question. I don't recall, however, expecting that he and I would be alone in his room, looking down at an empty piece of lined paper, feeling clueless. As if all the ideas were drained out of our colorful minds. 

"Have you never done this before?"

"I mean, I did get my mother to help me. It's all a matter of sounding professional and bragging in a subtle way, though," I told him, watching doubt spread across his face, trying to make it dissipate, "so, don't worry."

"I'm not really one to brag," said he, and boy, Lord knows he had the right to be. He scratched the back of his neck. "I sure as hell can't sound too professional either. I'm quite witty."

I eyed him up and down.

"Tell you what. I'll write you one on my own if you tell me why you want to get in this school. This school in particular."

He shaped his lips into a lopsided smile. "I gotta get in one, that's the issue."

And to think he came off as quite the rebel to me when I first met him. But he did have those moments, he would look and act himself, yet not himself at all. It was rather fascinating.

He sat back on his chair and ruffled his already disheveled hair, lacing his fingers through it slowly. I quit my staring later that I should have and picked up a pen, made sure that the ink had fully come down and was ready to soak on paper. And with haphazard, regular glances to him at my right, I began writing. Had I been a little too into staring at him, a little too engaged, I'd be writing a poem about his scruffy appearance instead of the actual letter. He slouched forward, elbows on the desk, and let out a heavy sigh.

"Your handwriting is nice," he remarked. "By that I mean, at least it's legible."

"Yeah, back in my day, we had to take calligraphy lessons at school," I said in a mocking tone that I rarely used. He laughed a short, witty laugh and pushed his hair back in a momentum, as if he was a model being sketched. Once again, had I paid more attention to him that I did to the letter, I'd be sketching his face all over the paper.

There were creases at the corner of his eyes that were looking at my focused face. And what knave would I be, not to admit that his stare brought me an unaccountable amount of satisfaction. But perhaps he was a bit too immersed in staring at my face and I was growing begrudgingly concerned that the situation would take a turn for the worst.

"Do I have a pretty face?" I raised an eyebrow, smirking lightly.

The corners of his mouth lifted, creating a most mischievous smile only he could pull off so exquisitely. And that's not debatable. You cannot argue with me on that.

"As pretty as your penmanship," he said when I put the pen down and looked at him in the eye. And we both laughed simultaneously, because we knew there was a hidden meaning behind this. A riveting risk that demanded you to take it. "Why, do I have a pretty face? Because you seemed to be staring at it a lot at dinner."

Oh, so, he had known all along.

He rocked his left leg from side to side rhythmically, and every time he would swing it to his left and he would briefly touch mine, I would flash back to the two days we spent alone, and how we'd utterly wasted days not talking to each other.

I lightly put my hand on his knee when it touched mine and retracted it, letting him know in honesty that:

"You're making things very difficult for me."

At the next moment, I stood up, gave him a slight lingering pat on the back, and left his room to go to mine, discerning the sound of him straightening up abruptly and heading after me when I left. I entered Lana's and my bedroom. He was fast at the doorway, leaning to the side to let his mother pass through. And as I did not know what to do with myself, I started fumbling into my drawer, pretending that I had some kind of purpose coming into the room in the first place, and came across the ace of spades that I had kept since my dramatic failures at that game of bluff back in August. Even though I did not recall having left it in the drawer, I ignored it and tossed it back inside with a sigh.

"Mother, could Frank drive me to Springfield this weekend? For the interview we were talking about?" I heard his dulcet voice say and looked around inquisitively.

"That fire and brimstone crowd for the offer in linguistics? I thought you turned that down," she replied, way too zoned out to notice we were staring at each other and were not letting it go. "Well, I say you go next month, honey. After New Year's. As for Frank, I don't control him. Why not ask him yourself?"

Yes, brilliant idea.

Hold on. No, that is a terrible idea that could end up in such a terrible scenario, I don't even want to know.

"Frank," he called, making me feel like my time was running up, my seconds running depleted, "well, can you?"

I glanced at Lana, who still hadn't caught on how intensely we were looking at each other. Then back at him.

"Remember, dear, the first week of February I'll be going up to see the folks for a day or two. Mikey will be visiting D.C. with his school. Perhaps you and Gerard could jaunt to Springfield that weekend," she reminded me, casually, not even trying to conceal the fact that she was pushing for it. Little did she know, she had no idea what she was pushing for.

"Sure," I conceded, for a moment feeling like I had been shoved to agree.

And then he broke into a broad smile and vanished. Got what he wanted. 

Doesn't he always?

But with such a tactful mind like his, he frankly deserved anything he wanted. Play the moment back in your mind once more, now that you can, and allow yourself to realize how seamless he had his way, how easy it was for him to get us all exactly where and how he wanted. How his mother offhandedly agreed—nay—she rather contributed to his plan. Tragic or brilliant, the way he made me agree without feeling any regrets afterward? Brilliant on his part, but my stance and attitude epitomized a truly doomed fellow, right there.

I blotted that thought out for the rest of December, that I was a real sap caught in his spiderweb, and the fact that I didn't see him around much for the rest of December helped. He was out, going with friends, returning in the middle of the night, so that I only caught a glimpse of him only when I stayed up late, which didn't happen often. Lana and I then left for a little excursion to where we first met, New York. She took me to her old apartment that was still funded by Daddy MacLoaded, and though I offered to take her up to my folks' in Pittsfield, she bluntly refused, with no sign of remorse in her hazel eyes. I think it is fair to say that my mother and stepfather were already convinced my third marriage wouldn't last long either. But, oh, let them think what the hell. In my fantasy and in my reality, Lana and I live forever together in peace and happiness. 

They say ignorance is bliss, and the deeper I got in this relationship, the more aware I became of that.

"I haven't seen you take a photograph in a while," was what the pretty boy said one night when he stepped into the house, nocturnal and scruffy-looking, glancing at me fleetingly from the other corner of the living-room.

I simply huffed with a little bit of confidence pooling in my chest. "Correction, my friend, you haven't seen me in a while."

"I know for a fact you haven't taken a photograph since 10th of December, because I hid your stuff in my room and you haven't asked for it since," said he; my statement ignored. He turned to me with inquisitive eyes. "What's the matter with you?" 

Frankly, I was beginning to drear our weekend in Springfield. I was dreading it immensely.

"What's wrong with him?" Lana, my lovely Monroe came strolling into the room, throwing me a loving smile and leaning in to kiss my forehead, answering her own question, "Nothing's wrong with him, he looks damn fine. Say, Gerard, could you take the trash out? I'm already dressed to go out with  _mon_   _beau_."

"I'll do it, Mother," said the younger one, Michael, from the doorway, having just stepped in. 

The way Gerard was frozen at my sight, staring in an ambiguous way, began to worry me as the seconds flew by and Lana didn't seem to notice. I sat back on my armchair, swallowing around an acid lump in my throat as I reciprocated the ambiguity of his stare in one look. He stepped closer. And closer. And much closer, so that he was looming over me, smiling a smile that had his own name all over it. 

"Don't tell Mother," he whispered softly over me, "but I hid your car keys."

"Frankie, hun, when did you last see the keys to the car?" Lana exclaimed from the kitchen only moments later, as I predicted. "Gerard, did you see them laying around anywhere?" 

He backed off, eyes still fixed on me with determination, and turned up the music coming from the record player way too loud for Lana's tolerance, and ultimately adequate to spread a smile across my face as I watched him make the music louder by turning the knob. Filling the whole house with his bright spirit.

"Gerard Way, turn that music down right now!"

He turned his back to me and consequently his mother when she came around, skulking with a stern look and shouting, as I was laughing lightly in my chair—that is, until she turned that highness of the look to me and shut me up instantly.

I got up from my seat with feigned shame, hiding a smile under layers and layers of aforementioned shame. 

I watched her storm off to search for the keys upstairs in vain, and then approached the then dancing teen in the middle of the room. He slowed down as I stuck my hand into his pocket and fumbled for the 'missing keys'. Spontaneous? I am not spontaneous. For God. I swear I had heard some tinkling.

"Thank you, junior," I said in a mocking tone and jingled the keys in front of his eyes playfully.

"I bet you know where to look for your little camera now, genius," said he, "make sure I'm in the room when you decide to ferret around."

A half-huffed laugh escaped me. "I think I know what kind of game you're playing."

Despite his impish attempt, my night's plans with Lana were not derailed, and we wound up leaving just at the right time to attend one of my favorite's photographer's show that night. Although I had to cope with Lana's criticism, and her comments on the 'tackiness' of new music and, overall, arts. The meaninglessness of pictures before us. And that proceeded to be so until our ride home. Then it had escalated to just a quiet vent, a way for her to get things off her chest.

"And Gerard, oh Lord, what's the matter with him? He's being so rebellious and so unmanageable lately," she made known, covering her eyes with her palm and exhaling a few times dramatically. "Thank God he's getting a taste of the adult experience next year. Then you and I will have the house to ourselves. Tell you what, I'm thinking about carting Mikey off to my sis who now resides in Wyoming."

"Don't know. Don't you think he should decide that for himself?" 

She cocked her head and looked at me sharply. "You don't think about having some time alone?"

"I just don't want to get in the way of the kids' plans is all," I claimed, calmly. 

She scoffed and proceeded to look out the window.


	7. Chapter 7

"Next week, Friday at seven we're having Claire and her husband over. Don't forget, Frank," she told me, passing me a clean plate which I toweled and placed in the cupboard first before objecting. 

Dinner parties, hoarding my fun of every Friday. What has my life yet come to?

"I can't be there," I announced calmly. Lana whirled around immediately to give me a look; the blank look with a reprimanding hint. Nobody told me we were having the president over and we needed to wear an expression of absolute blandness. Her face; so vapid these days.

"I told you I have an exhibition next week with Arnold Hayes at The Living Gallery."

"But you had that last week on Friday, Frank," she pointed out, placing her right hand on her hip and crossing her legs. In my mind, I was aching to keep that conciliatory pose, in hope that it would stir some tranquility in her.

"Art shows don't just happen once, Lana. What's the point of taking photographs if I get to display them only once?"

The jingling sound of cutlery being washed together was interrupted when one fork slipped out of her hands and fell to the floor, making her exhale in annoyance as she bent down to retrieve it. "But I've promised them you'll be there. I can't be without a husband alone at that table."

"Hello, perky family," said his dulcet soft voice when he entered the house. I didn't dare look over my shoulder. But keeping my distance did not thwart his plans. He stepped into the kitchen. Strolled up to Lana to give her a kiss on the cheek, and then drew near me. Everything seemed to have stopped functioning for a moment in my mind, as he seemed to waylay me whimsically in his own way. He placed a hand on my shoulder and lightly pushed me back to peck me on the cheek. Lips as soft as rose petals.

And as if it hadn't just caused cogwheels to go crazy in my mind, his hand lingered on my shoulder just a bit more, and then backed off. 

"Tell them you made a mistake then," I went on, telling Lana, and just when she drew in a sharp breath to speak, the plate I was holding slipped off my clammy hands and smashed to the floor in two pieces, tiny shards of the ceramic material slid all over the tiled kitchen floor. The noise echoed a couple times more in my head, just as I heard him draw in a sharp breath of surprise. I sighed and hunched down to pick up all the pieces. "Goddammit."

"Why can't you postpone it? You did that last month when you were sick," she went on and on, and I could almost feel fume coming out of my ears at that goddamned moment. 

He left the room and suddenly I wanted to smash every plate in the kitchen cupboard.

"Lana, do you hear yourself? I ran a fever of hundred and four, I couldn't get out of bed. I can't cancel the exhibition just like that. And that is that. Period. Don't go on with this no more."

Hereentered the room with an apple in his hand, perching himself at the end of the kitchen table. "I had a good day as well, thanks for asking, Mother and Frank."

"Gerard, get off the table right now," Lana scolded. 

"Ain't that a bite," he commented, holding his arms up to indicate no protest, but obeyed. She breathed out as if she was breathing fire. Then she seemed to ease up a bit. I eased up a tad, likewise, and watched as she toweled her long fingers and marched out of the kitchen. 

"Lovers' quarrel?" he teased with a smile-less face, but I knew he was teasing. He bit with his white teeth into his red apple with vigor. Why did I only then seemed to realize that we were left alone in the room, I do not know.

"Aren't you home early today," I remarked, glancing at the pendulum clock, showing six in the afternoon.

"Seems like someone's been keeping a close eye on my whereabouts," said he, pausing to bite into his apple once more. "I appreciate the concern. Though I do not need it."

"And I," I went on, now paying less attention to him and more on Lana, whom I caught a glimpse of as she was fumbling in a drawer it the hallway, "appreciate the fact that you came this early to help with dinner." I glanced back at him; his eyes lit differently, darting to other directions away from my own.

With my whole heart and soul, I wish I could focus on Lana more than him; and that just makes me sound like a prick, doesn't it? Yes, I was really having trouble focusing on my beautiful wife, rather than her son. Absorbing, compelling Gerard. Peculiar, singular Gerard. You would think the Lord had condemned me. And perhaps that is exactly what He had done.

Lana stood looking from the hallway, lips pressed together and handbag in hand, ready to storm off. And calling her name, again and again, spouting useless apologies, I chased after her and abandoned the young one in the kitchen. Eventually, I managed to soothe her, and holding her in my arms, I let her grumble about me as much as she needed. "You're being so harsh on me these days," she breathed out heavily, pouting plaintively, "it's like you don't even care about me." And on I went with apologies and calling her sweet names and stroking her hair until she was completely pacified and agreed to hug me back. 

From where she was standing, she probably didn't have the privilege of even catching a glimpse of the vista. 

I descried  _him_. Him, from the window, watching him pester his little brother. Him smiling widely when he'd achieved exactly that.

***

"I'm telling you, we live in the twilight years," said the long-fingernailed Claire in a sauce-stained A-line dress, causing her adjacent husband to wince every time she exhaled smoke to his direction without realizing she was doing it, "at its peak, even. That's where we're situated. Think of an economy stronger than ours. There is none; we play with the Soviets like marionettes."

She blew smoke to her left again. Husband bit back a cough.

Lana waved her off and pointed out something about the last president, which brought a hint of discomposure at her friend's face. She huffed. Exhaled smoke to her left. Husband was starting to get red. 

"Lana, honey, Harry was too busy writing ballads to Winston to get America up on top. Let alone the fact that Truman brought this surge of Soviets here. I'm tellin' ya, every corner you look at, there's a Russian spy hidin'. Goddamn Soviet espionage. Scums." She brought her tented fingers with the cigarette somewhere in the middle to her face once more and only then seemed to realize that there wasn't much to puff from that cigarette butt. "Jack, hun, pass me another one, thank you."

Apparently, I had first seat to the circus and I hadn't noticed all along. 

I liked to think that Claire was internally having a seizure. I especially cherished the thought of her being a Russian spy. It was quite entertaining while Lana was refuting, trying to reinforce her democratic opinions I was more than tired of hearing. My hands were suddenly more clammy than before, when I realized she might ask of me to speak up.

The husband and I exchanged a look simultaneously, listening to his wife laugh as Lana spoke. Her words would give you the impression that she was a die-hard Republican, but when she said, "Lana, quit jivin', honey! Besides, I'll admit, Kennedy's had a great deal of success so far," I began to grow confused. But why even bother? Her hands began gesticulating with a momentum that seemed almost unnatural, but automatic, in sync. Husband and I repeated the look of before as the woman went on, "The deal now's the Soviets and our men of war. Men that came back, years away from the wives, been doin' unspeakable things."

She jabbed the jutting ash of her cigarette off to the ashtray. The sound of keys jingling and blithe laughing and giggling filled me with relief. 

He had come back early. It was one of those bright evenings. Could you imagine him, treading with care down the neighborhood on his way home? With the sun skirting a beautiful orange and gold behind his back, without him noticing. His lips bearing the semblance of a smile, just enough to show that he is enjoying his thoughts, whatever they may be. I am a man that cherishes beauty, and I must admit, that might have been the most beautiful thought I've ever had. The most pretty and harmonious picture I had not yet taken. Lord, what I would give to have that picture before my eyes.

However, I was not to yet pay attention to him, who was in the hallway.

"I'm telling ya; unspeakable things. And with their nastiness, they've been divertin' our boys. You've heard of that, surely. Word spread recently; about an old rancher, was in the military. Used to live four blocks from here; married and everything. Some local shop owner noticed how he fell in specifically with a young man. And then some gang goons chased after the old rancher, killed him. Police didn't even bother."

"Did some justice. Ah, great. Another one of those pantywaists. We ought to keep a close watch on our boys now," Lana said, but I had stopped paying attention to them by then, as I thought I heard an unfamiliar voice laughing. Along with our pretty boy.

I sighed and glanced at the empty plates in front of me. 

I could be at my show. The light would be shining on me tonight. Instead, I'm analyzing presidents and filling my brain with unnecessary gossip.

The meek husband was enduring as well, nevertheless—and getting smoke blown right into his face, the poor fellow. I finally saw him release a cough and offered, 

"Want me to bring you some water?"

He levered himself upright and shook his head repeatedly in negation. "'M fine, thank you." I nodded understandingly, observing him trying to come around after a tough cough attack. "Tell you what," he eventually said, clearing his throat, "why don't we leave the ladies alone for a bit. Go for a smoke outside. Or somethin'."

My savior.

"Sure enough," said I, trying my best not to let my eagerness to leave show. Just as I stood up, Lana pulled me in for a mandatory kiss and then went on chatting with her friend. I walked to the hall, after the husband decided he was having that glass of water, and for a moment froze at the presence of an unfamiliar face next to the renowned pretty boy of the household.

"Hi, Frank," said the sweet face I knew, flashing a smile and pointing to his right awkwardly, pointing to a blond boy about his age. "This is Oliver. Oliver Key. Oliver, this is Frank. Mother's new  _beau_." I held back a smile at the way he giggled when he introduced me in that manner.

"How you doing, Mr. Iero," the new face greeted and stepped forward for a firm handshake as I still stared at  _him._ His friend seemed likable, but not enough to attract my most attention. "Gerard told me all about the intriguing things you do."

I nodded my head as if I knew what he was talking about, and for a moment my mind went to dark places. Intriguing things, did he say? 

"He did?" 

He nodded as if he knew what he was talking about. And those were the three seconds I could afford giving him some attention, until I was yet again drawn by Gerard's eminent stare. Was it confusion he was expressing, with his eyebrows raised in that manner? He leaned his head to the side.

"Hold on a second," coming closer, the prettiest of all boys almost whispered, and I dare say his voice was almost veering into discontentment, "what are you doing here? You have an art show tonight."

Ah, that. No, don't remind me. 

Because instead of an art show, I'm joining the circus tonight. Did I fail to mention?

I looked to the side as if waiting to glimpse at Claire's husband who should make an appearance at any moment, as it ought to be. Then, gave the poor excuse of, "Ah, yes. It would seem my buddy Robert could handle it himself after all." 

And yet Gerard seemed incredulous. Out of all the people I told, he was the one not buying it. Out of all the people I told and wished they wouldn't buy it so they would ask me for the real reason I wasn't attending  _my_  show that night, he was the only intellectual to find a patch in my lie. Of course, I should have known. 

I didn't like the way he placed his hand on his friend's shoulder; it seemed to intimate—and I wondered if I'd have the same feeling about it, had he done the same to his alleged girlfriend, Clara. But brushing that off, he led the way for his friend and they both walked off to presumably his room. One last time, I turned around and saw him throwing a baffled glance toward me. That time I was certain it was bafflement. 

"Sorry for the delay. Claire almost started a bull's session again," the person I had been allegedly waiting for turned up through the doorway. As eager as me to walk out of the house. "Jack Miles Cooper. Call me Jack," he offered his hand forward for a bland handshake, "I don't recall we ever got the chance to talk any."

"Well, you know. Didn't want to cut the ladies short on their conversation." I shook his hand once more out of courtesy, studying his features attentively. "Frank Iero, for starters."

He was a man of six feet, I daresay. With a square-shaped face and stubbly chin that I recalled his wife whining about incessantly. He had gray eyes that conveyed some tad bit of warmness and sympathy from his soul, and I can say with certainty, his presence alone was invigorating, and much less annoying than whatever was going on at the dinner table.

"I got that much," he pursed his lips into an affable smile and then stepped back to search his pocket and whip out a cigarette for me. I thanked him. "Pretty sure that you'd get dismissed if you tried to intervene, my friend. Claire won't let nobody cut her short. The woman talks a mile a minute."

"Kills time," I remarked, thinking that it sure did. The woman talked like a broken record; my first headache was hours ago when she first arrived. "So, are you from 'round here?"

"No, no. I'm from a small town in Virginia. But I met Claire here, after my hard-working folk bit the ground years too soon, working in the oil fields. So, here I am. And you?"

So, this must be what people do when they don't occupy themselves with art. Work down in the oil fields. Maybe one day I'll be all about that life.

I took a languid drag from my cigarette. "I'm from a small town in Massachusetts myself. Near Greenfield."

That sums it up. Telling people that Lana was my third marriage didn't always play out well for me. 

The street was silent that evening; with nobody around but us it was a quiet, sun-setting, golden evening. So quiet that I could hear  _him_  and his friend laugh raucously, never mind the fact that they were situated upstairs. I knew if I turned around and looked up, I'd be able to look at his window and maybe briefly glance at him. I knew he'd be there just like I knew Jack Cooper was standing next to me. 

I laughed to myself before turning around to actually glance up to his bedroom window, hoping to catch a glimpse of him.

"Shoot yourself now, not later. You know Lana will never overcome the shock," I thought I heard Cooper say.

"Sorry?" I whirled around, almost frantic. 

He looked at me almost startled as he puffed his cigarette. "I said...I own a cabin thanks to a friend administrator. Somewhere in the vicinity of Mount Greylock." For how long we then looked at each other with eyes wide—me, from the shock, and he, in confusion—I don't remember. But it did prompt him to later say, "We should go up there sometime, you and me. Get away from the humdrum for a while. Y'know?"

I have never been more relieved to have misheard someone in my whole life.

I mumbled an affirmative response as we continued to smoke languidly in the golden evening, until one of us—and you can guess who by now—had been once more distracted by a pretty boy. I turned to him and watched as the two friends wrestled each other playfully on the grass, Michael approaching from the corner of my eyes, coming home from school. He winced at them and talked to me, but I was too absorbed watching Pretty boy. Prettyboy.

***

"You ought to find a job, Frank. I'm having a hard time introducing you to people and telling them your occupation is 'artist'."

"Well, you could always just say, 'professional photographer'."

With Lana babbling so much about how I should get a new job—or an 'actual job' as she said in the ferocity of that or more fights—I felt the need to prove myself; prove that my job was the best job in the world. I made sufficient money—perhaps not as much as Lana, but still sufficient—and got to be at our home every day. Except if I had a show, or a photo-shoot for a family who paid the big bucks.

When Lana was around, I cajoled, wooed her, and spent all my time, dedicating hours to her. Sometimes she would be dissatisfied, angry even, and I would keep my distance until she had eased up again. That was one of those days. I knew she was downstairs, but I didn't know she was with someone until my attention was diverted by a soft voice—but it was not  _his_  and I was certain. I honed in, descending the stairs.

 "I just thought you should know, Mrs. Iero. I'm only thinking 'bout what's best for him, you know I do," I heard that voice again, clearly this time, and couldn't help but hone in, presuming who 'he' was that she was referring to. What's her name again? His girlfriend; or rather not. Clingy Clara.

I made my way into the kitchen, pretending that I had some sort of business to attend to, and I wound up getting myself a glass of water. Still trying to understand what Clingy Pig-tailed Clara wanted in that sunny, Gerard-less morning in January. Yes, it was my business. It was my wife she was talking to, and at that moment I was close to convincing myself she was referring to Gerard.

"Have you seen them or is this just assuming, Clara?" Lana spoke, raising an eyebrow. She had not acknowledged my presence just yet, so I prompted,

"What's going on?"

"G'morning, Mr. Iero," was the response I was not hoping for by the gal but still got.

"Perhaps Frank knows something about this. He is a man, after all," I heard my wife say, still not making the effort to look at me in the eye. I frowned in confusion. "Frank, hun. Clara has noticed that Gerard has lately been...suspiciously close to some of his schoolmates. Have you noticed this as well? Does he bring 'em around often?"

Suddenly, I had a hard time drinking from my glass of water, so I sipped it soundlessly during a short silence. My heartbeat was accelerating without me noticing. I cradled the empty glass in my clammy hands firmly. 

"I think something queer is going on between 'em," the girl prompted with a firm stare to my direction.

My head spun for a moment as the ground seemed to sway under my feet. I couldn't understand why that was happening to me, after all, it had nothing to do with me. I had had zero influence on Gerard, and that is that. 

But thing is, I was undoubtedly horribly afraid.

"That is a bold accusation you're making there, Clara," I managed to say, my tone veering into anger. "And yes, Gerard brings his friends around, every so often. But that doesn't mean a thing, let me tell you."

The young girl scowled down at her skirt, pouting slightly so that Lana wouldn't notice, but I didn't fail to notice. "I think you should keep a close watch on him and his buddies. That's all I have to say."

I glanced fleetingly at Lana and sighed at her lack of response. She simply sat there, not uttering a word.

I then announced, my voice indicating that I brooked no disagreement, "I don't think we ought to take that advice."

Lana instantly sat up on her chair and with an admonishing, "Frank," she threw me an utterly acrimonious glance. Of course she would; we were still fresh from a noon squabble. That's what happened when she had days off. "Let's keep it quiet, I don't want Gerard to know that we're suspicious of him," she made known, "but altogether, I don't want to believe you Clara, but I'm at least suspicious."

I drew in a sharp breath that was later hitched on a lump in my throat. A lump of accumulated words I wanted to shout exactly then.

I didn't want to know what else they had to discuss, so I turned my back on them and looked out the window. Only to then realize that a torrential downpour had commenced. Copious in just moments. And I wondered where he was right then, if he was getting soaked by the pouring rain. I wonder if he was indeed with this friend he'd introduced me to. The not-so-pretty-boy standing next to my pretty boy. My Prettyboy. 

How I wanted to throw that girl out of the house, and shout at Lana to make her come back to her senses. As the days went by, something seemed to weaken in our relationship. More and more. And I didn't know when it was going to show.

"What are we going to do Frank?" she asked me, when the girl had finally vanished. 

"What?" I replied, dumbfounded. 

"I don't want this to be true, Lord, I don't want this to be real," she covered her eyes with her hands and kept shaking her head, as if humanity was coming to an end. And Gerard was probably singing his way home, meanwhile. I imagined him doing so for a moment of silence that lapsed upon us, until Lana spoke again. "We need to regulate his going-out more. We cannot have more people noticing this."

"Don't exaggerate, Lana."

"I'm not!" she cried out all of a sudden. My eyes looked up to her slowly. Her face indicated shock. But funny thing is, if you looked away and back at her once more, you'd catch some hints that resembled insanity. "Don't you realize? This is outrageous. It's a disgrace. We need to pay more attention to what he's doing and who he's with. No more nights out."

And there he was, in the doorway. Just stepped in. All soaked from the rain, but humming quietly to himself. Alone.

Lana only heard the door shutting and perked up. 

I could look at him from where I was seated. 

And I had the luck to get a smile from him. Brief but enough to make me forget.

Her intense stare diminished and subdued my internal cheer. 

"You ought to talk to him, Frank, try to find out what's going on. Something screams fishy here."


	8. Chapter 8

If something was screaming 'fishy' to Lana, it might as well have been my fault entirely. It was obvious from the start that that pig-tailed friend of Gerard's, Clara, was ratting him out because she was overly resentful and wanted Gerard all to her self—who wouldn't, honestly. Now, you might wonder why I didn't point this out to my wife at an instant, but let me make myself clear. From the fair number of times—and scary, when you think about it—I have quarreled with Lana, I noticed that she is extremely conservative, and unwilling to change her mind or admit to it, if the other person is clearly right. She will bicker until things look up for her or the other person submits and let things be. Meaning that if I were to point out the obvious to her, which was that Clara was utterly infatuated with Gerard and because Gerard did not reciprocate those feelings, Clara was bitter, Lana would not have it because she had already made up her mind, that Gerard was somehow turning out to be perverted. 

Now if I persevered, it would be like I was trying to conceal something. Which I was.

I could not let Lana be suspicious of me, but at the same time, I had to suppress myself. Until I found the right time, I could not even afford to glance at Gerard, lest my staring gave me away. Thus, as he was beginning to notice the pattern, he began disappearing again and returning at unspeakable hours, which eventually Lana gave him a hard time for. 

My only hope to let my eyes enjoy his sight was the first weekend of February which was drawing closer and closer. 

Michael wound up leaving for D.C. with his school on Wednesday, the 30th of January, and Lana was beginning to pack her things for Friday. Meanwhile, she was giving me a lecture on thrashing out what ought to have been thrashed out by the time she would return. She obviously didn't want to have anything to do with it; she treated the matter like an elephant in a room, using the words 'you know what' whenever she referred to it. But then again, I did the same. 

I was mortified and had absolutely no desire to speak of what had been troubling Lana for the past week with Gerard. I was utterly afraid of letting him know that he'd been ratted out. He would be shocked and resistant to try to repudiate everything, as would I, had I been in his shoes. It was a violent process that I did not want him nor myself to go through. It made the air I breathed feel stagnant every time I raised the thought of it in the din of my mind. God knows what it would bring for him. God knows what it would bring for me.

He had stayed home from school that day and helped his mother settle in the car of his grandfather, who was parsimoniously throwing me glares from the garden of the house, sipping his tea sparingly or not at all. When he headed to the car and I went to pick up his cup and plate from the deck, I noticed he'd barely drank it, the cheapskate. And when I was saying my goodbyes with Lana, he was still looking at me, while I wondered why he felt the need to come and pick his forty-year-old daughter up.

Only when their car engine had made an incongruous noise had I began looking around for Gerard, who I finally noticed was offhandedly leaning on a column of our shoddy veranda, hands folded over his chest. And he was looking at me as if I had something to react to. 

"What time do you have to be in Springfield?" I asked once he'd come inside and closed the front door. He walked languorously toward me and shook his head.

"We're not going to Springfield," he announced calmly.

"What? But Lana called them about—"

"I called off the meeting last night. I didn't want to go anyway, I just thought I could fix things if I could get us to be together, all alone." I observed him taking a seat opposite me on the kitchen table, lifting his shoulders sluggishly. "And anyway, I figured you had business to tend to."

"What business?" I asked, perplexed, and he gave me a look of slight surprise. 

"Someone has a show tonight you're going to. It was marked on your calendar."

He was referring to my friend Robert, who, to be brutally honest, I had forgotten about. Hell, I rarely attended my shows those days. Why would I go see Robert's? Envy what I didn't have time for anymore?

"So, you called off a meeting with scholastic prospects because of a stupid photography show of mine," I rested my head on my palm and exhaled exaggeratedly, "Lana is not going to be happy about this."

"I don't give a dang. She doesn't want me to pursue linguistics in the first place. She thinks it's stupid."

"Well, it's not."

"Well, your art shows aren't stupid either but you've grown to call them that," he leaned forward and frowned intently at me, which made my stomach drop. As if being reminded that my career slipping out of my fingers wasn't bad enough for my ailing heart. They were not a bit stupid for me. I simulated the way he threw himself back and rested his back on the chair. "You've been shunning me in front of my face, you know. It riles me so damn much."

No, I wanted to say, I've been avoiding getting lost in you.

And then a vague notification of Lana's words made me perk up again. Reminding me that perhaps it was about time I'd tell him about the disclosure. But as I leaned forward, ready to eye him, he pushed his chair back and stormed out of the kitchen in an instant. By the time I had gotten up, I could already hear the sonorous sound of his footsteps from the stairs, and I imagined he made for his room when they ceased. I pondered it deeply, going up to his room and trying to tell him something concerning his own good. At the same time, I could not bear the thought of him looking crushed. 

More so, I could not harbor the thought of what would happen next. 

I ascended the staircase and froze at the sight of his bedroom door for a second before taking those valiant steps forward to knock.

I asked him kindly to open the door. I don't know if I sounded too serious and that's why he opened the door. His eyes were glistening as I didn't speak. 

"Whatta you want from me?"

"Just—" Really, what did I want from him? "Talk."

"Talk? Oh, please. I'm never notified when we're back on speaking terms. It is plain confusing and frustrating when you do whatever you want with me."

I backed off and raised my hands to the level of my chest, indicating that I had no intents to do anything other than talk. "I'm sorry. It is not your fault."

In fact, nothing was his fault. It was the world that was faulted.

Everyone was at fault, but him.

He let his door swing open to the end, and the sunbeams that were filtered by the orange curtains of his room covered his exposed arms and made me feel pacified. I still had that desire deep inside me, wanting to stare at him for ages. Once you'd looked at him, it became so difficult to divert your thoughts. His hand that was gripping firmly at the door handle retracted as he let his arm dangle to his side. I more than a second, and only a second was what I needed to want more, to let my eyes fall upon the comely features of his face that was letting go of that harsh frown he had given me earlier. And the remnants of it resembled a sky before sunset.

"God," he looked away, "you're making me feel like I'm misinterpreting things. Always. A mere look you give me, I misinterpret."

I didn't manage to say what I wanted to say. What I wanted to scream on top of my lungs, because, for God, he had never ever misinterpreted things. And whatever my purpose had been before I set foot in his room, I had forgotten. More so, I think I had forgotten my own name for a moment there, when the realization hit me, that we were finally all by ourselves. I think I let all sense slip out me, and knowing I did, I continued to be in his room. And for a minute, it felt like I was part of a very tacky, tasteless romp.

His face was one of confusion and shock, which should have deterred me, but since it didn't, nothing would and I became aware of that when I reached out and ran my fingers over his feline jawline, the smooth skin of his neck, and his downy arm, leading down to his long, delicate hand, which was not too warm, but not too cold either. I'm sure that if I had retracted my own hand from his, I would undoubtedly notice that I was shaking when he touched my arm. A reaction. Frankly, just the thought of being under his touch made me shiver. 

And when our bodies got closer and our faces were just inches apart, I don't know who but someone was pushing the other back. Perhaps we were both pushing each other back, but somehow we managed to stay in that half-embracing position for a while, staring down at each other's mouths and breathing heavily in doubt, fear, and I'm most likely speaking for me when I say, lust. I was longing to feel the same as I had felt when he'd first taken the risk and kissed me, but for a strange reason, I didn't want him to be the first to dare this time. I just wanted him, there, where he was.

It was perhaps the challenge he embodied, the peril he was offering, that made me feel not only young again, but breathing and lively. As a reminder, that life was worth living, because life didn't have to be a perpetual waiting game.

By the time I had to think all that, I had already pushed my face against his and was getting hit by surges of mixed emotions. I would argue that I was in a delirium, not knowing nor controlling any part of me, but everybody who knows me would refute that. Not that anybody other than my pretty boy would ever know what was happening between us. They couldn't.

Unless the room flooded with coppers who would drive me straight to purgatory and take  _him_  away from me.

The crimes I'd committed didn't seem to be a hindrance for me right then, as he and I began removing each other's clothes so that my desire to feel his soft, hairless, teenage chest against mine was fulfilled, and before I knew it, I could feel the whole of him. Palpate every inch of his body, because it felt like he was all mine. Mine. Mine; Prettyboy belonged to me.

Only a moment did I stir and stopped to hesitate. The most horrifying moment of my entire life. When I was on top of him on his own bed, looking down at him with reluctance flooding my mind and deterring me to move—I was merely panting. 

When he shook his head slowly and uttered simply that I was not the first. I was  _not_  the first.

From what he said next, I believe he said that in an attempt to console me and ease my mind. But my heart ailed and was in pain, even though what happened next I could only imagine in my wildest but best dreams. But running through my mind was that sentence that I knew was liable to haunt me for the rest of that day, disturb my sleep and every activity I immersed myself in. I couldn't stop thinking. 

From one hand, it pacified me to think that I was not the only one that had committed a crime. But it was impossible to ignore the sting of his words that left a sickening, nauseating effect on me afterward. Partly because I coveted and wanted to be the first to explore that prim body. But the more I thought that I was the second, perhaps even the third or fourth, the more I became insatiable and seemed to want more of him for myself. 

His hand reached out for mine at some point and gave me an affectionate stroke, and only then did I realize, I was completely, utterly infatuated with him. As much as a person can get.

And it saddened me to think that I had never felt that way before for another. Did it automatically cause me to realize that I was phony? Yes, it did.

I had my time to panic about that once he'd fallen asleep beside me, when our bodies were no longer sweaty and our hearts had stopped beating at 180 BPM. He had turned his back to me in his soundless sleep, which was probably better, because his face was so distracting, I wouldn't have gotten the chance to think, not even for a minute. Although, it wouldn't have changed much. Because, even when I wanted to think, the only thing I seemed to be capable of thinking was; that was it. I had caused the downfall of my own life. 

Had someone taken my life right then, I would die happily. 

And I preferred to imagine that, because I knew that if I died any other time, I would die either lonely or eternally sad.

How could I go back to a normal life? How could I ever smile at Lana without feeling stifled by guilt and drained by his absence? Because, sooner or later, I knew he would be gone. It was unsurprising because it was foreseeable—but it still filled me to the brim with despair, knowing that weeks and months would pass without seeing his face. Let alone the fact that I still had to tell him, I had the task of warning him; because I knew what Lana knew. And Lana was suspicious of him,  _rightly_  suspicious of him. It would crush him to learn that his secret had been disclosed. 

I knew he'd woken up when he turned to face me. His sleepy eyes blinked in shock several times when they fell upon me; I had that moment, too. He then let out a laugh and ran his hand over my chest. "I didn't think you'd still be here."

I smiled. "What, do you want me gone?" I asked, stroking his chin lightly. "Say it and it's an order, your majesty."

As I ran the tips of my fingers over his lips, I realized, I was still shocked, trying to get accustomed to what was happening. Trying to fathom that I was there and he was there. 

"Do I have a pretty face?" he asked with a smile, as cheeky as it was strikingly beautiful.

"One cannot fathom," said I, in complete and utter honesty, "how pretty you are."

"Are you scheming to make my mother hate you now?" He clicked his tongue and ran a finger over my parted lips, his fingertip attracting electricity under my skin. "You did it now. You slept with me, old man. Hell, Mother hates you now and she doesn't even know why."

What he most probably meant as a light joke felt like a slap in the face. And it stung. God, it stung until I brought my face closer to his and felt his lips against mine, getting shivers. 

Yes, it would, without a shadow of a doubt, crush him to learn that his secret had been disclosed. I couldn't see him like that. But also, I kept having that feeling that he would disclose something to his mother in return, hoping that she would maybe forget about it. 

And that was what scared me the most; because  _that_  was a risk I couldn't afford to take. And that's what kept me back from telling him the truth.


	9. Chapter 9

How debauched, dissolute, pathetic I've become—particularly pathetic. Pathetic because I attempted and achieved to satisfy my insatiable venereal hunger, in tandem with a disoriented, pure boy in bloom, thinking that it was a one-shot thing that could fade into oblivion. Yes, my life had taken the form of a tasteless romp. A tasteless romp, where a hunchback repays for his pains, for he loved a pretty boy so  _horribly_.

But wait. Horribly is unacceptably wrong within this context. Pathetically, maybe. The elation that filled me as the dawn faded was inexplicable. As the external, exuberant, morning light filled his room which had been occupied all day, I lied there in incredulity, stroking the back of his head and keeping his warm body close to mine. With the reminder that anyone could burst in at any given moment and all my happiness would be dilapidated, I kept thinking to myself that I ought to accumulate that singular flame of elation inside me and hoard it for the day of despair and sorrow that would soon follow—because, everyone knows, every sin has ensuing ramifications. It was impending that my sin would cause eternal longing and sorrow.

I had been standing on the precipice for a long time. I knew in an instant that that boy meant no good. And though I went against the grain, playing clueless, I thought of him, all the same. The pretty boy had engraved his mark in my mind, and by then I was too late; I was stupefied, too frail to come to my senses or escape.

The weekend I spent with him was only proof that he would leave scars in his wake, as he would inevitably be forced to abandon it all. Just like a gyroscope will always inevitably return to equilibrium, just like the tide will always ebb—it was certain that we would bid each other farewell, soon enough. 

He didn't know a thing, yet he was acting like he knew everything or at least enough.

The two days of his body against mine, the sweet taste of his unblemished skin, and his thriving lust left me wondering how I would escape the realm of missing him. 

We went for two strolls and I held myself back strongly not to reach out for his touch, because that is where I had to draw the line. I specifically remember retracting my arm from him as we left the house, and he looked back at me with those hazel eyes, understanding exactly what and why, and instantaneously blotting it out. We woke up, oblivious to when we went to sleep the night before, and he read his book of a collection of poems next to me on the veranda, while I was contemplating the golden morning. From the corner of my eyes, I caught a glimpse of whom I conceived was the milkman, chatting with a surly old man in a robe. People cycled down the lousy Squirrel Hill neighborhood, and you knew that all those people were heading to the workplace downtown.

And as I looked at the pretty boy sitting beside me, immersed in his reading, it suddenly dawned on me that I should  _never_  consider the job downtown, or uptown, or wherever. Instead, I should start attending my own shows more often.

"You got too bright light in your eyes, for a dabbler," he commented in derision to my aimless announcement, stealing a look to me.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked, smirking at his mocking that took me by surprise.

"It's supposed to mean," he laid his book open on his thighs, half covered by his beige shorts, "you're half a shutterbug. Now, I expect a photo-album on just me. And quickly. I ain't got much time before I'm leaving this pigsty."

So, not only did he acknowledge the fact that our time running out, but he also made known that he halfheartedly wanted to leave. 

So, I knew I was alone in thinking that I wouldn't at least feel the same without him for a while.

"Oh, come on," he frowned at me, "don't you take me for no fool. I know mother's been scheming to cart me off as quickly as possible. She wants you all for herself."

I suddenly felt nausea rising up. I felt like I was the sickest person in the whole wide world.

"That's not the case," I tried to begin to explain but didn't know I was clutching at straws.

"Whatever the case might be, I don't really care. But I'll drop you a line. I'll write, for sure."

***

Not knowing when exactly Lana would return had me startled awaken when I heard a door slam shut—and I was pretty sure it was his bedroom door. The bedroom in which we were sleeping, next to each other. I closed my eyes for a minute or two, trying to force my mind to go back to sleep, but sleep wouldn't come to me. The air I breathed felt stagnant and the room too insulated to sleep. Suddenly, his hand that was curled into a fist in mine, clenched. But he was still sound asleep when I looked at his peaceful face. I looked down at our hands for a while—during which, I retracted mine from his despite myself.

I left his bed as quiet as I could and tried not to roll down the staircase as I headed down, in a stupor accompanied by an irritating headache; my temples throbbing with every step I took. The kitchen light had attracted a swarm of moths, I noticed firstly, and thought I should've shut the window before going to sleep. 

It took me a moment to realize that Lana was not frowning nor glaring at me when she first saw me; she was smiling warmly as the rest of her face showed hints of weariness.

My first thought was focusing on not freaking out while a series of flashbacks rose in my mind. The whole weekend hit me like a surge and caused my temples to throb harder. My headache deteriorating. Her smile, unabated.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you. It's just..." her voice trailed off as she looked down at her clasped hands, a shadow of coyness underneath her eyes. "It's so heartwarming. Gerard has always had problems sleeping. He used to wake up in the middle of the night because of nightmares—" I stood frozen, having the feeling that I would swoon at any moment soon— "it's just, I've never had somebody that has been that good to my sons. You've been so good to him. You've been so good to us."

The conclusion of that pep talk almost knocked me out. Seriously. It was like a stratagem involving a punch in the gut and a recap of what I've done so far to add to my penitence. 

Lana had gotten the wrong idea, and guilt was shrouding me. She thought I was only comforting Gerard to sleep, god _damn_  me.

Her expression seemed almost distorted before she said to me, "Frank, honey, you don't look okay. Do you want to lie down?"

"I'm just sleepy is all—" and sore from an unreal punch— "How was your trip?" I almost said through gritted teeth. 

I couldn't see her clearly after that—something hazy clouded my vision. The next thing I knew, she was helping me up the stairs, where I could barely feel my knees, and light blinded me when we made it to our bedroom door. I slid under layers of blankets and my heavy eyelids closed shut.

And the next morning I had a quick moment of shock, when I realized Prettyboy was not next to me. I thought that this had been it—that I didn't even get to say goodbye. Yet his presence at breakfast pacified me and at the same time startled me. He sat opposite me with the same collection of poems in his hands, immersed in the activity, just like the day before. But that day had been an utterly different one. My preceding exaltation had left remnants that made me long for yesterday. And I could only hope to fool somebody with my resigned facade, because acting was not really my forte. 

Just when Lana decided to leave the table to go look for her pack of cigarettes in the living room did the pretty boy rise from his seat and come over to me, throw his book over the table and lean over my shoulder to say in my ear,

"Don't think I've forgotten anything," and sneakily reached over to steal a strawberry from my plate, simultaneously pecking me on the cheek. He left my side and I was not breathing until I realized I wasn't breathing; I peeked into the living room and observed as Lana was still struggling to find that packet, ferreting in drawers.

She ended up finding it a bit too late, on the kitchen table. By then she should've gotten dressed and everything to leave for work. 

She scurried out of the house as soon as Gerard walked out, and I was for once not amenable to get re-accustomed to solitude.

I hurried up to Gerard's room and I was surprised to see my Retina on his bed. No note, no nothing. He simply took it out of his hiding place because he knew me so well—which was both troubling and astounding. I grabbed the Retina and my keys, my readiness to leave the empty house overflowing. I hadn't properly worn my long, brown coat yet when I saw it. I saw the flock of birds flying low.

An epiphany had struck me like lightning. I am pretty sure what I experienced was tantamount to being high, because for once, ideas could not stop coming to my mind. 

I stepped out of our Squirrel Hill house and Mrs. Chinsburry greeted me at an instant while I would not look at her:

"G'morning, Mr. Iero. How's it faring? Is Lana back yet?"

 _Yes, good morning, indeed. It is faring. And Lana is back, I'm pretty sure I saw her today,_  I wanted to answer but it turned out, I never did.

I chased after the flock of birds flying overhead like an absolute lunatic. It had started drizzling, that was what concerned me the most; because I had an idea. I did not know where it had come from, or how good it was, but I had something and I was absolutely crazy to not let it go.

***

"What is this, Frank?"

"This is me," I replied firmly, looking down at the ensemble.

"I don't know where to start...to commentate. You seem to have diverged. What happened?" Robert looked stunned, his wide round eyes looking down at the picture. He lifted his gaze to me. "I'm gonna start with the fact that you knock at my door at midnight. What has come over you?"

Yes, that was rather presumptuous of me to do. The thing is, believe it or not, the house was empty once again. I am so impertinent for letting Gerard sleep over to his friend's house, but Lana wouldn't notice, even so. You see, despite having spent a few minutes with me since her trip, she decided to shun me for her employer was hosting a party. The firm reached another milestone or something. Something along those lines I heard over the phone, with laughs resonating in the background.

Robert knew he wouldn't get an answer out of me, so he went on, "Look, Frank, I am overly fond of you, you know that. But right now I'm at my wit's end. What is happening on that canvas you've brought with you? Is it even a photograph you took?"

"I don't see why it doesn't seem like it. What's wrong with it? Those are three photographs on top of each other. See, I coated each one with two layers of white glue. Stick one on top of the other. Another layer of glue—" I began to explain cheerfully but Robert cut me off—

"And what's with the red and orange in the background?"

"A photograph. Of the sunset," I explained, glancing down and wondering if it wasn't obvious enough.

"You used Kodachrome only for the sunset?"

"I ran out." 

A man has got to do what a man has got to do when running out of Kodachrome. I remember the days I didn't use Kodachrome because I couldn't afford it.

He sighed, resting his hands on his hips as he continued to study the canvas, ignoring the ten other photographs I had laid in front of him. The canvas, I guess you could say was the most riveting because it was a novelty for me. I had never thought of doing it. But Robert stood there observing it, breathing in and out slowly. Then, he took two steps to a milky-white sideboard and took out a roll of Kodachrome and threw it to me. I looked down at it and thanked him, though I was not sure if I wanted to take more photographs. For then, at least.

"So, let me get this right, okay? A sunset—then on top of it, a puddle on the ground that reflects a flock of birds flying. And then  _on top of that,_ layers of glue—" he said in a tone that almost veered towards madness— "and two posters of fucking Che Guevara. What in the  _world,_  Frank? And why are they different colors?"

I shrugged my shoulders like it meant nothing. Somehow, the confusion it was causing Robert started to entertain me. 

"I thought it was relevant," I reasoned.

"Relevant, you say?" he huffed and flashed a smile. "I really don't have a problem with communists, Frank. I wouldn't mind if you were a communist, either. But this is going to cause a big fuss if I put it up in a show."

I told him that I didn't mind. That I brought it along in any case and that I had more photographs he could look at, but he sighed exaggeratedly once more as if he couldn't let the matter go. So, I told him he could keep the canvas and do what the hell with it. But that didn't satisfy him like I hoped it would either.

"What does it mean?" he asked me, frantic. "Tell me at least what you had in mind."

"Don't know. Kennedy? Missiles?" I especially recall thinking of a stray missile blowing me up. My dissoluteness vanishing in a matter of seconds. How wonderful would that be? I was envisaging that moment of sheer peace and relief, so engrossed, that I hadn't paid any attention to my friend gaping at me in question. 

He cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck so awkwardly, I almost felt bad for not speaking. 

"Never mind that," he eventually said, "I'll keep 'em and see what they make of it."

"You will?" I flinched in surprise. I'd expect he would give it back to me but he didn't. "You actually will?"

He nodded, first in ambiguity and then in utter resoluteness. "Have a cigarette with me, will you?"

He passed me a pack and I took one out, taking my time to light it; not with so much ardor to take my first drag. Intrigued, I cogitated once more. Studied the canvas, pierced every corner with my eyes, examined it until it had ceased to look like a picture. The ensemble started to gradually haunt me when I looked elsewhere, some blank wall.

My friend frowned so severely, that his countenance almost resembled one that delivered something portentous, and I wondered what I'd done. If it had been a misstep to come over in the first place. "Frank," he eyed me seriously and I shammed feeble nonchalance, "are you sure photography is where it's at for you?"

"Why, yes."

"Then why did you bring me a painting?"

"It's not a  _painting_ ," I stated firmly, laughing it off for the most part, "I didn't draw anything _._ I just thought painting over the pictures of the man would make it more riveting. Besides, the red and yellow goes well with the sun in the background. I-it doesn't exactly mix in, it's not blending. It pops."

"It pops a'right..." He said after a moment's reflection, "You know you can still do this kinda thing, and I'll support you. By any standard."

I froze. 

He would support me by any standard. If I chose to be a painter.

Would he support me still if he really knew what I was? 

Because truth be told, I had changed tremendously over the last year.

I had become a phony. Cozenage. A fool full of deceit and clad in wretchedness and vileness. That's what I am, I realized. And it was at that very moment that I realized, the fool, that I was a fraud. 

I led myself down the garden path; I hoaxed my wife. I slept with her  _son,_  goddamn me.  _I am a pedophile,_  I scandalized myself. An A-class sinner, who is liable to burn in hell all by his miserable self. 

"Frank?"

The room started reeling, and I felt like if I didn't soon head off, I would asphyxiate in the din of my own poisonous thoughts. 

You see what I'm driving at. I lost my mind for a moment there.

"Wait, where are you going?" asked my friend in question when I lift up. 

To hell.

"Home. It's really late," I reasoned. He stopped me at the door, just when I was about to slam it shut in my wake, his hand reached up to rest on mine, and I whirled around, raising an inquisitive eyebrow.

"Sarah's not home tonight. You should sleep here. Don't wander around this late," he proposed, slightly opening the door that I was about to close. As if he was sure I was going to persuade me. But he was frustrated when I snatched my hand back, let go of the door and walked off. 

 _Lana,_  I thought. Lana. Lana, my wife. I need to get back home to my wife. And if she wasn't to be home tonight, I'd sleep on our bed. I'd sleep on her side of the bed and I would beg the Lord to make this guilt fade away. I'd implore him to eradicate history, erase yesterday and the day before. Erase the pretty boy from my memory.

And if He was not to erase him; I would want him to be the sole concern and thought in my mind.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the support, everyone! Hope you're enjoying this story xx

Of course I didn't get home to my wife at an instant. Halfway through the walk home, I realized how confused I'd let Robert behind. And as I was walking back to his house to apologize or whatever I was planning to do, my eyes started stinging and welling with tears. He must have caught a glimpse of me walking back from the window, as he was still awake with a martini on his left hand, and then he ran out of the house. He cried out to ask what was wrong.

Everything, quite frankly.

I never knew the magnitude of a friend's embrace. In fact, I don't recall ever having a shoulder to cry on. Whenever I'd shed a single tear, my stepfather used to tell me not to act like a gal. So, I'd stop but that didn't mean I'd overcome the reason I wanted to cry.

Robert and I just stood on his porch, and his hand was patting down at my back, but I couldn't think of him at that moment because of the din in my mind. I hadn't realized it was raining cats and dogs, I was so preoccupied. But the next thing I knew, I was coughing uncontrollably and my chest rose and fell intermittently. I slept on his couch that night. When I woke up, he was asleep on the floor beside me, his head askew. 

The morning was somehow better. Like the surges of yesterday had ebbed away. Naturally, when I got home I hadn't been expecting any of it. What I heard first was foreboding.

Gerard was home, for some reason. His voice was raw and his tone belligerent. And Lana was leaning on the chiffonier in the living room, a turbulent expression all over her face, so contorted, I suddenly knew exactly what was going on.

"You  _can't_  do this to me, it's not fucking _fair_!"

"Watch your language, Gerard. Don't you think I know what's best for you?"

"I haven't even flunked or anything, I've passed all my exams so far, and not in a half-assed way, for fuck's sake—"

"I said watch your  _language_ ," I heard Lana say in a voice that brooked no altercation. "You should at least be thankful that your aunt is amenable to take good care of you. You don't know how lucky you are."

A loud thud resonated when she said that. You could tell he'd kicked something over from his rage. He was  _this_  close to hitting the ceiling. "I don't wanna live with that old spinster in fucking Maryland! I have  _friends_  here. If you think I'm—"

Lana continued to admonish him for his language and his tone, and then I came in, in need of an explanation, because nothing had happened like I thought it would. I thought she'd told him about her suspicions, about how she'd thought he was morally corrupt. I thought she would sock him at some point, but she didn't, when I grasped her hand firmly and stroked it in hope to mollify her. 

That was it. She was sending him away to another school, giving him another life, a life he didn't want; a life far away from his friend and his family. And then she proved to me she had it planned all along; raving about his undisclosed friendships, she was sending him to Maryland for school. Then a summer camp. Then to college. She was practically disowning him and asking for commending. He stuck to his guns and tried to defend himself, until she finally told him about her suspicions and he was left gaping at her, unable to even hold a distorted countenance. Unable to even raise his finger to point to her or to me, he just stood with his mouth agape. 

I felt wrong. 

He turned to me. "You knew about this?"

I didn't know if he was referring to the school-chaotic-situation, his aunt, or the antics Lana was referring to. Still, practically floored, I did what I deemed right at that moment and nodded my head. He snatched his hand back and his index finger that was pointing to me, and looked even more shocked, more so dejected. 

I can say with candor, this was the second most frightening moment of my life.

He had the perfect opportunity to demolish my life and reputation, my marriage. But in that sixty seconds time, he didn't speak; nobody spoke. He had the chance to take his revenge on me.

Yet he merely stared blankly down at the carpeted floor. 

Lana stood with the momentum of someone that was dealing with the vanquished, or a hoodlum, when she was making sure her son's life was going to seed.

The next morning he didn't come down for breakfast. Not because he had been taken away, no. Not yet. He was only in his room, hiding from the peril of the house. Until the clock struck seven and thirty, and he was out of the door without giving anyone a glance. It's not like we deserved it, either. Lana looked down at her magazine with intense penitence burning up in her eyes. 

I continued to cough my lungs out for the next four days, until the day he was gone. I was upstairs at my desk, looking through oodles of photographs, when sundry sounds that indicated his departure reached me. I leaned out the window and saw that under the great sycamore tree in front of our veranda, the red car was already resonating a commotion from its shoddy engine. The younger Michael was rubbing his eyes with his clenched fists furiously. The aunt was shading hers with her palm. Lana, I could not catch a glimpse of her face.

But he. For Lord, he looked like a traveler. Young Rimbaud. Tom Sawyer abroad.

Gazing at him from the window just made me wonder if it was the last time. The last time I would see him, the last moments of loving him.

I couldn't run downstairs to bid him farewell. I knew it wasn't what was supposed to happen, but I slightly wished he would rush upstairs for just a second. I just wanted to see if it would feel the same, holding him in my arms, like it was on that weekend. 

The only thing, he looked up at my window and we got to make brief eye contact. With those luminous hazel eyes and his pale skin, he looked absolutely perfect, and the sun was on his lips. His lips seemed to try to form the words he wanted to say, but it was of no use. 

I was up there, he was down there.

After he left, the sun made its usual round of the house as the morning ripened into noon and evening.

It was the day we realized I hadn't only come down with a cold, no. It wasn't an irritating grippe that made you want to drink lots of tea, either. 

The gloom of his departure had settled upon me, when I spent the rest of the miserable, bleak and chilly February, deep in ennui and pneumonia, on my cushioned bed. Only moving to see if I could still control my muscles. 

Michael, at times, brought me tea and supper and shoot the breeze which made me forget. Partly. Only partly. There were things no one couldn't help me forget. For instance, Michael reminded me every time of how Gerard would never shoot the breeze. No, Gerard wasn't like that; he made meaningful conversations, with a reason. Always, something that ought to be done was conversed very briskly with him, to get it over with, because he despised small-talks and wasting his time chewing the fat. How I missed his mutiny. His attitude.

Robert rang me up sometime during early March, when I was still recovering with heartache and failing, rickety lungs. He told me something I would've appreciated more, had I not been in that feeble state.

Apparently, he'd put up my picture of the two Che Guevara's anyway. He'd titled it 'Two Che Guevara's' too, as I hadn't instructed him in any way. Anyhow, the picture had wreaked havoc in the positive sense. People were asking for copies, and some spendthrift was bidding a damn king's ransom for the original the night of the art show. Robert was raving over the phone about how I was an absolute genius. I couldn't get a word in edgewise.

He called me blasé when I didn't react boisterously, but I told him I was still kinda stiff and delirious from the sickness.

"You made a thing," he'd said, "and I was so wrong. You can easily freelance your way through life now."

Not so much. I felt like going to an isolated home by the sea to write my memoirs. My antics, up to my thirty-two years of life. I didn't exactly have a lust for life.

There was this guy, Robert said, some guy named Andy-something, that took a look at the ensemble and said that the colors don't exactly blend, they pop. See, I thought just the same. The guy must've been a critic or something, so he told Robert that I ought to have done it with celebrities. That if I brought politics into this, then all hell would break loose. 

I didn't really care. 

All I had left of Prettyboy until he'd write was the photograph of Lana's and my wedding. Where he simpered at the camera with his hands behind his back. But it was too small of a photograph, and all the others of him hung on the wall with so many photographs so that he sort of blended in. I didn't want him blending in. There were only a few photographs of him and they were of him as a child. I wanted him as I'd met him.

I was lying on my back on the rumpled bed that I had spent that much time on, it didn't even feel soft and cushioned anymore. The picture lay framed on Lana's bedside table. I lit a cigarette since she wasn't home to bicker about it, and stayed there eyeing myself of the past. 

Back when Ray was still warning me,  _"don't fuck this one up, Frank."_

Did I?

Did I, though?

I seized the photograph in my hands and ran my fingers across the silver frame and the glass. My eyes were then staring right at his portrait, at the faint gleam of acquaintance. I never knew I had placed my hand on his shoulder back then. I didn't recall having done so, either. 

I guess because he was the Pretty _boy,_ my pretty  _boy_ , the thing borne in on me only then. 

Back in boarding school, I went to an all-boys boarding school like most boys. So, I guess the Prettyboy did have a precursor. One too many, it would seem. You see, in boarding school, it was not unusual to have affinities for other boys, since boys were exclusively  _everywhere_. 

And it hit me.  _It did_  hit me. But I didn't want to face it. 

And by the time I was done reflecting on it, I looked down and my cigarette was almost burned out. 

But by the time I was done reflecting on it, I was also unwilling to follow that skittering thought in my mind, see what the whole fuss was about. I didn't want to explore it, lest it became a bigger deal. Subconsciously. Without me knowing. 

It's a scary thing, I tell you, when you realize you don't know how your mind even works. Or when you realize you don't know half of the things that have been going on in your own head, good Lord, I got gooseflesh. 

It really is a scary thing. 

***

Third of May and he still hadn't written.

When Robert learned the news, that I had gotten a job uptown, furious would be an inadequate way of wording his reaction. He rushed to my house and pounded at the door, and when I opened it, he almost socked me. Yes, socked me. His eyes glimmered in wrath. He was that furious. He'd grabbed me by the shoulders and asked me, again and again, "Why'd you do it? What's come over you?" And spout aggressively at me, "You asshole, ignoring your aptitude when others wish they could have it." He was even more furious than the first time I'd told him I was not coming to our art show. He gave me hell for about thirty minutes. Wouldn't shut up. 

"Imagine," he said when he'd calmed down less than a notch, so that I got him to sit on a chair and communicate with me, the more civilized way, "imagine having this dream and being this close to it," he pressed his forefinger and thumb together, "and then...abandoning it all to work like all the others."

"Imagine," I backfired at him, but in a calmer way, "having relationship problems with your third wife. Your mother's driving you up the wall about it."

"Frank, you gave me your word. You said it was only March. Temporary ennui."

I knew what he was driving at. He was right; I had said those things.

"Why're you so riled up about it, anyway? It's not like I'm deterring you from going on on your own," said I, trying to justify myself. However, that seemed to rile him even more. 

"Why, I can't care about my friend?" he said with a distorted face. "I can't comprehend this, it's incomprehensible," he did those skittish gestures he did always when he got angry, "I told you I was going to support you no matter what. Why, you're bailing out! What impression is that supposed to give me?"

"Coffee?" I asked and served him some despite the lack of response.

"I mean, it's a free country. But that doesn't mean decisions can be taken so easily. Y-you need to ponder first."

I sat opposite him and went silent for a moment, seeing as he didn't want to add anything else. 

"What, you think I didn't think about it first?"

"Not sayin' that..." His brows drew together as he mused. "Actually—that is exactly what I'm insinuating, yes. That's what I'm driving at. I don't think you mulled over it any, in fact." I didn't speak. Everything I'd to say had already crossed his mind. He lifted up and hunched down where I was, scowling down. He put his hand on my thigh. "Frank, I plead of you...Stop with this nonsense," he said.

"Yeah, right. It ain't that easy," I shook my head, not in denial, more in incredulity of my predicament.

"If it's about your marriage, if you've got some...I don't know. Inferiority complex. Tell me, let me help you." I told him this wasn't the case. He clicked his tongue. "Hell, you always said there's no chance you'll even consider getting a normal job. A sudden change of heart like that is what concerns me most. Say, why'd you got into art school, anyhow? Tell me like you always do."

In slight irritation that had just burst up inside me, I rolled my eyes and let my chest upheave and fall with the doleful sigh that escaped me. "To pursue—"

"To pursue your dream, eh? Damn right. Quit jivin'. I've known you since art school, I remember what rebel you hid in you, what tenacity you have. You don't fool me." 

The only one I seemed to fool was myself. I was always only fooling myself.

Woe is me.

He requested my attention back to him when he tapped my knee, and proposed, "Whatcha say we go for a trip or somethin'? Like the ones we used to go on when town got so dingy, you needed some fresh air."

It was an inane thing to do right then. What if Lana got mad at me? What if he wrote and I wasn't there to receive the letter?

Robert must've seen the dilemma in my eyes, because he took a conciliatory pose and put on his resigned face. 

"Look," he said, "at least come to a show with me. On Saturday, there's this Robert Neuman exhibition. In Pace. It'll distract you, I'm sure."

I looked at him in disbelief. "You want me to go to a painter's exhibition?"

"I'll come with!" he exclaimed with hope. I knew where Pace was. That meant a night in New York City. But on the other hand, while it would bother Lana, I found myself suddenly unable to decline my friend's offer. 

Like I'd expected, Lana scoffed and turned away when I told her at such short notice, which was the moment I was stepping out of the door. It really got me thinking, how bad of a husband am I? Perhaps not getting married in the first place would have saved me so much time and sorrow. If only I hadn't been so obsessed with marital status. Maybe it was my mother's fault. If we want to psychoanalyze me, well, my mother got married two times. Perhaps she hadn't explained the sacredness of a bond like that too well, if at all.

But the crux, if you may, of the night in Pace, in New York City, was when I was standing a few feet away from my friend, studying the meaninglessness or perhaps meaningfulness of cubism. Simultaneously, I looked around and realized that many galleries I've visited before were all white. The floors were white marble, the walls were all white. I know the exhibits need to stand out, but the lack of color always put me off.

Then I made a turn around myself and from the corners of my eyes, I saw someone staring at me. It wasn't a calm stare, not like the ones people give you in a patronizing manner. It was the stare of mere interest. 

I turned and reciprocated the look. 

He was a man only a little younger than me, I dare say. He had strong features, framed by thick, blonde curls. He was clad in brownish pants and he wore a vest over his white dress shirt with the sleeves up. If you want me to be honest, he looked quite flitty to me, but then again, you can't always tell these kinds of things from appearance. I hope to Lord you can't. 

He paced across the room in even strides, still locking eye-contact with me. And his hands were behind his back. Then, and only then did notice the notebook he was hiding.

An art critic, I supposed. I know I've said I absolutely despise art critics, but there was something else in the intentions of this one. They weren't exactly hateful, ready to spew scorn at you and appraise you in a hostile manner. 

I realized I didn't exactly know what this man's intentions were when he looked at me, and I wasn't even sure why I kept staring at him myself. A lingering look like that could be conspicuous in a place like that. But then I just didn't restrain myself and just kept eyeing him, until he'd dropped his gaze and smiled to himself when he looked up at me again. I huffed a laugh likewise. 

Then Robert talked to me with his reserved, which I so uncreatively always called  _art-face_ , and I was attempting not to look out of place.

When I walked out of that gallery that night, I thought to myself, I knew something more. It didn't matter if I didn't want to pay notice to it, it had happened, and I knew. 


	11. Chapter 11

"Hello?" 

"G'morning, this is Wallace Orwell. Is Lana there?"

A framed photograph of Lana and her father used to be there, just beside the phone, and I pondered while looking at it for a moment, causing the person on the end of the line to call, "Hello?" again into the phone. 

"No," I said, releasing an internal sigh. I had never heard that voice before, back then. "I'm afraid she's not here. Anything you want me to tell her?"

"Tell her I called, if you'd be so kind," the voice answered, serene with its huskiness. "As a matter of fact, who are you?"

I found the question to be rather absurd and a tad bit hostile, if I'm being honest. I told the person I was her husband. Frank.

"Oh. Right." There was a short pause in which I grew even more inquisitive than before. "Well, thank you, mister. Have a g'day."

And so  _he_  hung up. And so, I went back to my business.

I retreated to my seat in our shabby living room, ensconced myself opposite of Robert, who had the countenance of a man with a vision. And I wondered if I even wished to know. Even if I didn't, I made it seem like I did.

"I was saying. To hell with conceptualism. I never liked the epithet,  _conceptual_ , to be associated with art, anyway. It can get confusing. So, this—" he paused for emphasis, hunching forward and pointing a finger down to the floor without reason, whatsoever, "this—what it is you're doing deserves a different name. It is not political. At least I don't think it—"

"It could be utterly political," I said, just to confuse him, and observed as his face became more wrinkly and his brows drew together, "it might be just that. I never said that I wasn't into politics." And why not, actually? Why can't I be into politics? Everyone was into politics these days.

"But you're not a communist!" he bleated, as if he was trying to convince someone besides me. Perhaps himself. And then suddenly you could see behind the wrinkles, self-doubt protruding. "Or are you? I guess it would make some sense, since you did the thing—The thing with the guy on t-the... You know. Che Guevara."

"Robert," I said in hope to bring some sense into him, since he was acting like someone else, "I am not a communist." Not that if I wanted to be, the fear of being sacrilegious to our country would hold me back or anything. I just can't comprehend politics, and that is why I gravitate towards art and shun the rest of the world. Frankly, that is what I've been doing my whole life. I went on, then, when he seemed, for some reason, pacified, "But even if I were—"

"Oh, I wouldn't care about  _that_  and you know it. I would want to know, but I wouldn't try to deter you or anything. You know I wouldn't. Not me."

His tone sounded so certain, so steady. I trusted him with my whole heart, but I didn't want his certainty. I didn't want him to be so sure.

He asked if anything was wrong just before Lana entered our grimy, Squirrel Hill house. 

Robert greeted her and deemed it was the right time to head off, despite it being still afternoon. 

It might just have been one of the few times Lana had come back before sunset. 

Michael was called down for dinner and we all sat around the table. All. Completed.

But still missing a piece. 

It was almost June and he still hadn't written—but then, it came. I was sure something was different, when Lana insisted on having dessert, all huddled around the table. I knew there was something, waiting to be announced. She just waited for the right moment to push her tongue forward, to feel less guilty, and spit it out.

"I got these just this morning—" Morning, she said, morning! And I only got to see them after dinner. How despicable. She told her son he had a letter from his brother and handed him over a beige piece of paper, and Michael lit up. I recognized the piece of paper immediately. I had seen him write on it before. "And Frank this is for you," I heard.

Mine was still in its envelope, and it filled me to the brim with anticipation. 

 _To Frank,_  it read simply on the front. How inconspicuous, you would think. You would think that he was acting out of character.

I reminded Lana about Wallace Orwell as soon as I thought about opening the letter, and since she had read her own, she retreated to the living room to call the man back. So, there I was left, in the dining room with Michael, who was too immersed in writing his brother back already. I lit a cigarette and carefully tore the top part of the beige envelope, envisaging how carefully he had closed it in his dainty, own way. The paper was soft to touch and the black ink had run and been smudged. It was then that I began to understand that it was a typical Gerard thing. It was then that I also noticed it was the first letter he'd ever written especially to me. Nobody else was allowed to open it but me. It's a grand thing, receiving a letter. It's a better thing, I tell you, knowing it's from  _him_.

 _Frank,_ it read,

_I took a long stroll before writing this, you know. I don't know why, I just felt like it._

_So, how is life in old Squirrel Hill? Has anything changed at all? Or does the monotony still lurk behind every hedge and tree? Does Mrs. Chinsburry still ask you 'how's it faring?'_

_The thing is, I don't really care._

_Life here in Maryland is nice, I suppose. As nice as it can get in a place like this. They're teaching us to hate each other. But I think I'm failing miserably, and don't get mad if I tell you, you might just be the reason why. I can't hate anyone else other than you. I actually, really hate you with a passion. But overall, you might also be the reason why I can't like anyone else. Everybody I've met seems like a bit of a downgrade since the last day I saw you. And don't think I've forgotten anything. I remember. I also remember you didn't say goodbye, which angers me even more I want to sock you and never apologize, but at the same time, I'm glad you didn't._

_I kind of hate goodbyes. Don't ever write me 'goodbye' at the end of a letter (if you plan to write back to me, that is, though I doubt it)._

_But remember this. I'm really, seriously angry at you._

_Anyhow, I heard about your sickness. The month you got pneumonia, I mean. But you kind of deserved it, I think. Yeah, you did. I also heard your shows have been getting a lot of attention, so congratulations, I guess. You finally got where it's at? At least you attend them now, that's what I've heard from Mikey._

_I would ring you up too, but I don't really know what to say. I don't have much time to do so, trying to catch up with what's going on in this new school and all. I'm leaving this week for summer camp and I'm not really looking forward to it, by the way._

_You might have noticed that I've attached another letter in this envelope. Do me a favor, please, and hand it over to Oliver Key (5416 Plainfield St.) because, you of all people, know I can't. I hope you understand how goddamn stupid it is that I can't get in touch with my friend and I goddamn trust that you will do as I told you. Please?_

_I guess it would be nice to hear from you again. Or not, actually. I'm not sure, if I'm being utterly honest here._

_Gerard_

I was not prepared to know that _that_ was all he'd written to me. The way he chose to end the letter just there almost made me stir. 

The fact that he wrote about how he hated me, that I deserved to get pneumonia—oh, and the fact that he doubted I would write back to him. I don't know if he meant for all those things to come out as hurtful—but if he had, then he failed. I agreed. I did deserve that month of weakening pneumonia, I did deserve his hate. I accepted it and still do and will until the end of my life. He had the _right_ to hate me, is the thing.

But I read all of what he'd written again and again, just because every time it was over, it made me feel like he was  _there_. In the room. His presence just gave so many things a purpose. So many things just didn't make sense without him. I couldn't make heads or tails of what people had been saying to me half of the time, but feeling his presence in the room was slowly bringing me back to my senses. Because it didn't make sense, waiting around in the house after ten o'clock. I had no reason to be in the house at all after ten o'clock. It made sense, being there until the afternoon, to help Michael with whatever he needed for school. But had Gerard been there, had he really,  _substantively_  been there, I would wait all night for him to return home. 

After rereading the letter for the tenth time, I noticed the second letter he was referring to and took it out, contemplating if it were my place to read it or not. And I deduced that it was not, in fact, mine, therefore I shouldn't do more than hand it over to Oliver Key, a name that sounded familiar, but didn't raise any faces in my mind.

In the living room, I saw Lana reposed on the couch while talking into the phone. Cord wrapped around her finger, legs crossed, and head thrown back; she looked too zoned out, too occupied with the stranger to notice me. I thought I could deliver Gerard's letter to his wishes to his friend right then.

And walking through the tumult of the Squirrel Hill, musing and considering what I had to say back to him, in a letter, of course, I saw a face that reminded me something. And I guessed it must've been Oliver Key, because I recalled seeing him over at our house, back when we had that dinner with Lana's friend and Cooper. 

 _'We should go up there sometime, you and me,'_ I recalled his face vividly.

"From Gerard? Gerard!" the blond boy's eyed bugged out when I was done finding out that he was indeed Oliver Key. I nodded in response and his jaw almost dropped as he examined the letter. "Heck—this _is_  from Gerard." Clearly, he knew better than me.

"How'd you figure,"  I mumbled with tone drenched in irony, perhaps out of spite or jealousy. Or perhaps because I needed to get back as soon as possible and start writing a letter. "I need to get going."

"Wait, Mr. Iero!" he cried when I turned to walk off. His eyes glazed with a fiery urgency to know something. "Do you know why Gerard left so suddenly? He never said anything."

And what could I answer then? To those exigent eyes of a boy I perceived to be merely Gerard's friend and nothing else. 

I hemmed and hawed and filled the silences with a bunch of 'um's while the boy looked right into my eyes, before finally settling on an inadequate response, "It was sudden indeed. And unexpected."

There was a short pause that brooked no disturbance, for the blond boy was mulling over my answer intently. "You didn't send him to live with his dad, did you?"

I shook my head. I didn't send him anywhere. I was never his parent nor guardian, it was not my say; not in my hands.

"Well, is he coming back for summer vacation?" he wanted to know. And only then did I notice the longing in his eyes. We shared the same feeling of anticipation, of longing to see him again.

I mumbled incoherently an honest answer; I told him that he wrote he would be in summer camp. 

I sounded like someone who hadn't been living under the same roof as Gerard. I sounded like I had never known him.

The boy looked down dejectedly and thanked me, in a morose manner. He then turned away and trudged off. 

And so did I. 

I retired to my office upstairs when I got home, instantaneously. 

There seemed to be many people who unknowingly tried to thwart my plans of writing Gerard back. Ray, for instance, who hadn't acknowledged my existence since God knows when it was the last time. He, all of a sudden, rang me up and announced that he was dying to see me and that I should come over and visit sometime. To me, it seemed like he was pretending that we hadn't talked since forever, and thought that a phone call could compensate for everything. And when I cockedyedly promised to get in touch soon and hung up, Lana suddenly deemed it was time to announce to me that we would go over at her friend's, Claire's house, the exact same evening. 

To be or not to be angry? That is the question. 

I wanted to object at an instant, but something held me back when I thought again. But as I slumped forward over the blank piece of paper with a pen in my hand, some construction workers outside our house started a commotion and began drilling right off the bat, so that I couldn't focus at all. The racket deterred me from writing a single word. I set my pen down on the table and thought that Gerard had been right about doubting I would write back. I couldn't write back. I had nothing to say other than I wanted to see him. 

"Frank, I'm done with the letter to Gerard. Do you want me to write anything on your behalf?" Michael asked when he re-entered the kitchen. I nodded wearily. 

"Tell him that I said," I said, "that I did as he said."

You could see that confusion had misted him, because he didn't know the first thing I was talking about, so I explained concisely to him that I was referring to something Gerard had mentioned. Not  _what_ he mentioned. But since Michael might just be the most upright person I'd encountered, he did let me know that he was still puzzled, without asking for further explanations. 

***

"You draw pictures, Frank?"

You surely remember Claire. Quite honestly, it's impossible to forget a woman like her. Her voice pierces through one's ears and the walls, and by the time she has said two words, you beg for it to stop. 

"I take photographs," I explained, trying to conceal my distress from being spoken to. I wasn't really in the mood, and I wouldn't speak had it not been for Jack Cooper, who looked merely intrigued. 

"Must be fun," he commentated, friendly smile plastered on his face, "more fun than working on lonesome ranches, I bet."

I shrugged. "I wouldn't know."

His wife placed her hand—the one that was holding her cigarette—on his shoulder and shook him lightly, but in a way that made him look around in discomfort. She put a proud face on, saying,  "Jack here, he's got the foreman job. It's a hard work, isn't it? Gettin' up when the sun's still down to leave and head up east. But guess he copes."

Cooper's eyes wandered evasively, while he nodded faintly. Meanwhile, Lana put her hand on my shoulder likewise and started applying pressure on a stiff muscle with her strong hand, I almost winced. I tried not to wince. "Frank, too, gets up early in the morning—" for non-work-related reasons,Lana probably forgot to mention— "and the art shows, he does them all by himself. Oh, God, how stressful they are. He has to be there and talk to people all day—" except not always, she also omitted to say.

It may have been me, but there seemed to be this peculiar feeling of competitiveness that subsisted. 

The contenders eventually retreated upstairs, because Claire had apparently some photographs of them in high school to show Lana, and the competition ceased. The atmosphere became less stagnant, and the afternoon ripened as the sunset approached.

"Long time, no see," Jack Cooper pointed out and lit a cigarette for himself. I mumbled a reply and did likewise, placing the cigarette between my lips. He leaned in and lit it for me, and then I took the first languid drag. Jack Cooper was a good fellow to smoke a cig with, to be frank. He then asked, gray eyes looking to mine, "You guys doing anything in the summer? Headin' up someplace?"

"Lana might head up to see her folks for a week, I reckon. Son's going to visit his aunt."

"What about the other? Gerard, wasn't it? Bright boy."

And pretty boy, above all. But I spoke after a long pause. Expressionless. "Summer camp." 

He nodded. "And you?"

"Might wanna..." I wanted to say I may visit my folks, but that wasn't going to happen. Wasn't going to let space for my mother to find holes in my marriage. "might head up home for a while. Adams, Massachusetts." And that was all I said. No mentioning my mother or anything. I had, indeed, missed home, but didn't exactly get excited to see my mother. 

"Adams County, eh?" Cooper asked. "Well, drop me a line, tell me if you're around, end of July. I'll be up on the hill, I reckon. Claire's workin' all summer, she doesn't need me around all the time."

I mused for a moment in silence and realized that was something to look forward to. He wrote me down an address and I promised to get in touch. 

And this time I didn't mean it as I meant it with Ray. I was going to get in touch. 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the support! I'm sorry for the late update. I might be flunking every subject at school, but at least I still get to write. Updates may be slow til the end of June...But I'll try my best to update whenever I can.  
> Enjoy! Thanks for reading! xx

One might suppose that with all my amenability and the disposition, a hankering for an evasion, I would have mentally sunk back and thrown everything of the past into the abyss of oblivion, heaving a sigh and watching all my problems dissolve. Yet it was not quite like that. Not that simple, it never is. I did not let the still fresh memory of my pretty boy slip out of my dingy mind, not for a single moment. Even if I had smiled to whom I deemed was well worthy of a smile, like Cooper or Robert, the smiles I put on felt all fabricated, underlining that I was a sham to the bone. I wanted to feel happy. I wanted to be able to let myself go and make something out of my sincere gloominess. And instead of digging deeper into it, I wished I could feel comfortable and bask in my sheer, unwanted misery. 

My mental lassitude this time was not a symptom of an impoverishing sickness like the one I endured back in March. My despondency in the absence of a dear friend was something predetermined and unpreventable, especially in the mornings. 

I knew I was alone when I woke up and it gave me the sense of being a loner again, as if I had never gotten married in the first place. However, this time, it did not drive me out to find someone to talk to like it used to do in the past. That feeling this time, pushed me forcefully back to bed. I had the time to think about everything and was afraid that I was deeply depressed. The thing about depression is that it is said to lead to death. But do you know what's so dreadful about death? It's that you're completely on your own. More than I had been these days at the end of June, with the imminent sunshine of July.

"Nice weather today."

"Indeed."

That is not the conversation I wanted to have with anyone ever, but it was a sign of calmness in the household when it turned up as a topic. Because when it didn't, mostly anything else I discussed with my wife, led to repulsive, wearisome bickering. I just wish sometimes the weather would change so intermittently, so that we could discuss it with more vigor.

My dear wife and I argued more than ever when Michael headed off for west Wyoming, to visit Lana's other sister. Bethany seemed kinder than Lana's other sister, who had taken Gerard with her. Or maybe that was just me. I barely could remember the woman's face.

End of June, Lana and I had a big argument, perhaps the biggest one yet, which led to her leaving one week early to go to her parents'. What provoked the fight in the first place wasn't that big of a deal. Think it was about leaving the towels to dry above the sink or something petty like that, but it ended with Lana breaking about five China plates or so. And oh, she used to love those China plates. 

How the argument ended, the way she had looked in my eyes and warned me to  _return to my senses or else_ , had had a big impact on me.

I wound up abandoning the Squirrel Hill house the next cloudy morning, since I couldn't stand the goddamn stifling silence and the creaking of the stairs. Robert was bemused when he came by the day before and saw me packing to take off, but he accepted my decision nevertheless, eyes downcast and all as if that would change my mind. I went off on him, supposing that he was acting that way only due to the fact that I wouldn't turn up in an upcoming show, where a big name I didn't make the effort of recalling had made plans to 'meet up' and 'discuss'. Then I saw Robert's countenance distort and indicate disappointment when I yelled. My raucous yell echoed and bounced off the walls, it yelled back at me and I repented, wanting to sink to my knees and apologize. I didn't get the chance to, hindered by my ego, so Robert stomped out of the house vehemently. He was really never one to shout back when shouted at.

I found it to be quite ironic, when Runaway by Del Shannon came on the radio and the car filled with his 'why's and woes.  _As I walk along,  I wonder what went wrong, w_ _ith our love, a love that was so strong._ Tell me about it. Or don't, actually. I prefer not to think about it.

Another jolt I remember in that car, whereupon I was having an imaginative dialogue with my wife, accepting her long-winded harangues loaded with insults and her self-assertion, which in the end, was interwoven with some semblance of reason. And I wondered if she, like Gerard, had had all the right in the world to hold me culpable and enmesh me in her wild words and anger. And perhaps she had had the right, from the first moment I laid eyes upon him and studied the essence of  _his_ smile.

I was planning to arrive in Adams after six hours of driving. I knew for a fact my mother and my stepfather wouldn't be at our family home, but at the last moment, I wished they would be. I just was so deprived of qualitative human interaction that I couldn't stand being inside the car anymore. I got out of the car and slammed its door, and that slam sounded in the void of sound. A mud-spotted, hunched sign that read 'Mason-Dixon' was moving to and fro with the blow of the wind, making a slight screeching sound. The whistle of the wind came next, and then the shivering of the dark and lanky fir trees, the rustling of leaves fallen upon the ground. Frantic I had been in my sedan, but somewhat pacified in the greenness and the embrace of nature, on the hilltop that I had stopped.

I realized then, I wasn't that far off from where he was. Maryland was less than an hour drive from where I was.

I got slumped in the car again and heaved a sigh of exasperation. 

I took off for Adams, not looking back.

For a couple of minutes more, all was vastly green as far as the eye could see; dark, dense, dank forest. Barns and lonesome ranches and rustic homes still propped themselves up here and there, on the roadside. 

It was fairly dark when I whisked by what used to be our local grocery store, retained in my mind from my childhood. A stream of moths siphoned out of the night by my headlights became more evident as I started to come to a halt in front of the wistful-looking, shoddy home. Calling into my head, the wish of matrimonial bliss I once had. Causing me to reminisce on my boyhood years, of running around and behind my mother.

_"What do you want to be when you grow up, Frank?"_

_"A tree."_

_"And apart from that?"_

_"A family-protector."_

I was a very sad boy, to be honest. Somehow my mind had developed to think that marrying some gal would be the panacea. 

And Mother didn't exactly fight me on that. Ever. So it stuck with me.

I dragged myself up the stairs and into the bedroom of my parents, picked her side and just yearned after her embrace for a little while, until my eyelids became heavy enough to convince me to drift off to sleep.

And you won't exactly believe me when I tell you how the rest of the story goes, but I will serve my purpose and tell on. 

In order to sustain what was left of my sanity the next evening, I decided to go on a stroll around town and observe the tumult; maintaining my listlessness, of course. So, there I was, in my hometown, wandering aimlessly in what would strike one as petulance, but it was my prerogative to be petulant. Then suddenly I catch a glimpse of Jack Cooper. I froze in a who-is-going-to-approach-whom-first deliberate way and stared until he looked back. 

He might have been the first person in a while, that seemed glad to see me too, in a non-exaggerated, frank way. So it came out, at least.

"Frank Iero," he shook my hand firmly; so substantive, so human. "See, I told ya we was gonna meet, 't some point. Thought you'd come end of July, though. Summer's not yet at its peak."

"It is, down on Squirrel Hill. It's sticky weather, it is." I didn't want to come back to the balmy-weather-conversation I so often had with Lana. "What're you doin' so early? You got work up here?"

"'Course not," he laughed and we began walking together on the stranded part of town. "I own a cabin up the hill, thought I told ya. It's my safe place. Wanted some quiet, that's what it is."

"It ain't quiet enough back home?" I huffed disbelievingly at that. "You come into my house for a day, and we'll see what you think of wanting silence after a while."

"Yeah, well, there's a difference between quiet and silence, isn't there? Silence is no sound at all, where quiet is just sound but not loud. But now, with Claire, she's the opposite of both, it seems."

No wonder she is friends with Lana. Don't want to know who talks more, though if I were to place any bets on it, I'd know whom to vouch for.

We passed a church on our way and both cocked our heads to observe the vista. The words that parched in my throat came out of his mouth. 

"You believe in God?" Cooper asked and I couldn't get my hands on anything ominous in his tone. Somehow I wanted to get asked that question, for a long time. 

"Don't know," I answered simply, "got no reason to look into it, either."

"You don't go to Mass and stuff like that?"

I hardly attend my own shows. My demotion wouldn't allow me to go to Mass, you see. I wouldn't deserve the benediction. "Not anymore," I shook my head and didn't allow myself to conceal that fact with a feeble justification about not having enough time.

He said he didn't either, unless he visited his old folks. 

We walked farther on, to the end of the street, before a wooden gate about calf-height, presenting a stony path. 

"Wanta come up the cabin an' drink a little whiskey or somethin'?"

It was then when I looked into those grey pupils that I had a flashback; my mind flooded with memories that emerged at an instant. All of a sudden, I saw the face I saw at the gallery that one night. I saw Prettyboy lake. I saw Prettyboy smiling by that lake, a complete fragment of my wild imagination, because that had never happened.

"Sure," I said to Jack, thinking why not, in the surface of all the aforementioned. 

We took the stony path that led up a hill and the talking came out of me willingly at some point, every petty thing I had been thinking of for a while I began saying aloud and, as I observed, so did Jack Cooper. It seemed to me like I had walked a line and broken an insubstantial barrier that had been keeping me back from opening up. But there had been no one to open up to in the first place, before him. And moreover, I was home. I was looking over the grassy hills with the birch trees. They were so real, I could almost see my mother in the distance, beckoning me and extending her arm for me to take. 

"Must be purty in winter," he commented, "sure as hell is purty in the summer."

I stopped and looked down the hill we were on and kept saying what I was thinking about, "This place right here is where I was taken snowboardin' when I was literally a whelp. You bet it's pretty in the winter."

"Not too scared of the lobos, were ya?"

I shook my head. "Man up, they said. Get over it."

"Yeah. That's what ever'body says," he replied. Much to my surprise, as my fear of wildlife began to wane when I was about twelve, that is the first time I came in contact with a glaucous wolf. And my fear of them re-increased apace. One thing I love about living in a raucous, polluted, stifling city is that you'll only bound to find wolves at the zoo. Most of them, anyway.

The following events that took place on that day, are most difficult for me to recount as I internally psychoanalyze myself. But I guess that's the whole point of this, anyhow. I remember it was the June 20th, and now you must be thinking; well, the summer solstice. That is precisely my point. I was never one to believe in superstitious things or even presages. Portentous incidents. Symbolism, signs from God. Bullshit, I thought back then. But, come to think of it now, the 20th of June was when I got married to Lana, more so, one year later, the day on which I—as you must have guessed by now, reader—acknowledged what I had failed to acknowledge so long ago. 

We went up the hill, Greenhorn in the horizon, presenting its utmost majesty as the highest peak of Massachusetts. Cooper took the liberty to serve us whiskey in the cabin and it was then I realized, my thirst could only be quenched by alcohol consumption. I drank as much as I liked, but I was not drunk. I remember clearly everything that happened next that day, and the day after. 

An hour of chit-chatter and drinking, now and then, led to me abandoning my senses, despite the fact of not being drunk. I willingly let go of my senses.

"I had a hunch bout you from the start," he began to say, definitely driving the train of intoxication. He really looked like a man who liked his drinks.

"You see, I had a hunch that you might say that."

"There was something about you. Something queerer. Might have thought you was one, at the start."

"Might have thought the same thing about you." Truth be told, I had, subconsciously. 

"Is that why you came up here with me?" he inquired, a pinprick of confusion in his eyes. And then, when a moment of drunk reflection passed, definitely having taken the train of drunkenness as it seemed to me, he put his hand on my knee and I looked at him. Not surprised. 

 _'Is that why you invited me up here?'_  I could have countered but didn't.

He moved closer to me and with the tips of his fingers touched the side of my face, eyelids concealing the top part of the grey irises. 

His lips were very different from Gerard's. Fuller and less smooth. His skin was less smooth. The sides of his face were stubbly. 

And although what we were doing seemed quite capricious for married men, it still felt like our actions were all thought over so assiduously. I felt the essence of intimacy like I've rarely felt it before. My senses teemed with a lust that needed no justification, no further explaining. 

It all felt like it was reviving, or better; giving a new reason to the dregs of my love in abeyance. Certain and real. Bona fide.  


	13. Chapter 13

July ripened and August came fast. My contrition was only ephemeral when I was with Cooper. I began what I guess is the literal definition of an affair, but it sounds different when I put it that way. I do not need to elucidate, that it wasn't one of those wild, lascivious sexcapades—perhaps it was illicit, because it was homosexual—but it was simply a respite from my toxic relationship with my wife, that had become something chaining and unchangeable. It was futile to even think of improving anything in our marriage, I began to think. Reposing, drinking whiskey three times a day, going for walks in nature with a person whose company was most enjoyable had made me wish summer wouldn't end.

Cooper had to leave, however, mid-August, as his uncle had fallen ill with pneumonia. It was quite convenient that I received a letter from Lana around that time, that read:

_Dear Frank,_

_You were not picking up the telephone. Urgent situation: Camp Davis is sending the boys back home, they were flooded out of their tents this Sunday. I need you to go fetch Gerard for me. Read the flyer I attached to this, you'll find the address. Be there before noon, Wednesday._ _I'm very busy right now. I hope you understand._

_Be back there with you on the 27th._

_Yours,_

_Lana_

There, you see, she used to end all of her letters with 'faithfully yours, Lana' and spray a bit of her perfume on them. It practically was like I was reading a letter from someone else. Nevertheless, the importance does not lie on the details of Lana's letter and the intricacies of our relationship—it was not something that needed analyzing then and there.

The magnitude of this letter was that I would see  _him_  again. 

And so, I had gone out, straight after shaving, soapy-earlobed, to get ready and take off for Maryland right away. I couldn't stop thinking of him waiting, all alone, alongside the road, with his baggage and red cheeks and nose from the scorching sun that morning—I rushed out of the house and got in the car. The leather seats were hot like oven-racks. I made a stop around 10 AM just when I entered Maryland and I was unfortunately confronted by a dead battery, and the sun was just above my head when I took off from there. 

I reached my destination one hour later; welcomed by the forest that had signs here and there that read 'Camp Davis, Almost There!'. It just turned out like this, that Camp Davis was in the core of the forest. However, even when I reached it, there was no Gerard waiting around. The camp was empty. No personnel, not a wight within ten yards radius outside. I was then a-jitter lest delay had worn out his patience and he had headed off all alone. I left the Davis forest and stopped right outside, on the side of the road—and the fact that the engine had begun roaring angrily again was very ominous.

I stood limply outside for a while, breathing in the hot air and mulling over the possibilities of him having left with someone else. I wished that was not the case. I longed to see him again. I  _breathed_  to see him again.

I rolled a cigarette with great care, trying to pacify myself and cursing under my breath. 

A car whisked by and my anxiety coerced me to lean in to check if he was in there. 

He was not in the car. 

My impatience started driving me crazy; my heartbeat accelerated and my hands were clammy.

Out of the blue, I heard a, "Hey!" and felt the blood rush to my head. I looked behind me. 

"Hey, you asshole!" he shouted from afar.

The cigarette fell from my mouth and onto the gravel road when I noticed him, standing still thirty feet away from me and looking with sly eyes. His lips parted in a childish but endearing smile. His hair was unkempt and his appearance bedraggled, but charming as always. He was wearing a short-sleeve button-up I had definitely seen before. I didn't know anymore why we were still thirty feet away, but I realized soon I was suddenly afraid of being the first to approach him. But then he came rushing toward me and then I took a few hurried steps forward, my mind going crazy when I could finally hear his respiration close to my ear as he launched at me with a tight embrace. 

He might have been a little taller than before. I wasn't sure if it was my rationale talking or if my senses were clouded by the fact that I had missed him so much. I drew back slightly to admire the face that I hadn't seen for so long and then I wondered, if there was a small possibility, if perhaps he loved me as much as I did him—but then he pulled me closer and that enticing rebelliousness of his prompted him to connect our lips. And as of then, I didn't give a damn about the cars that were scurrying by. To hell with them, I thought. 

The comely features of his face aroused memories. "You have freckles," I pointed out, running my thumb over his cheek.

"No, I don't," he objected and pressed his lips tightly together when I insisted. Showing him even if he couldn't see them.  _There, see. There's one there. And one right here_. They were beautiful. "They come out in the summer," he looked down in a coy way and then frowned at me with a lovable pout. "You've shaved only one side of your face, don't talk about my freckles! What a sap you are."

"I was in a hurry," I explained myself.

"I don't believe it. It's noon, for Christ's sake! I was the last one waiting around!"

"I got held up, I swear."

He pushed me back lightly. "I waited for about three hours with the camp master! And God, he was horrible, he talked about his daughter and nothing else!" He heaved a sigh. "And then I came out here, in case you didn't know how to find the camp."

I stroked the side of his face and looked at him with an apologetic smile, saying frankly, "I'm terribly, _terribly_  sorry."

"You should be. Little more and I was going to hitch a ride." He crossed his arms and his eyes roved around frantically, feigning nonchalance. Oh, how I missed him. He glanced at me by accident and groaned before throwing his arms around me again and embracing me warmly. "What happens now?" he murmured, nuzzling my neck. "You're not going to walk off on me now, are you?"

***

"Take him home to his aunt's. She will be back in a week. That way, you can go back to your folks," she announced so offhandedly through the telephone and I stole a look to my left, where he was perched on the diner booth, eating uninterested his pancakes. Lana heaved a sigh when I didn't say anything for a while. "Frank?"

"I can't leave him all alone for seven days."

"He's eighteen years old, Frank, he can take care of himself."

"I could take him with me. The folks won't be back home for quite a while."

There was a hint of incredulousness in the 'What?' she uttered next. "You mean you've been all by yourself these days?" she inquired, huffing a dry laugh, "And what have you been doing up there all this time, Frank?" When I was ready to make my case she spoke before I could open my mouth, letting out another one of her laughs, as she remarked oh-so-wittily, "Oh, I know...Artists need solitude. Very well, then. Don't think Gerard will wanna go up in the middle of nowhere, Frankie, but you give it a try, go on. Anyway, baby, I need to get going. G'bye."

"Talk to you soon," I said, too late, as she'd already ended the telephone call. 

I retreated to where he was sitting, barely eating and gazing, with a look almost wistful, at the empty driveway outside that was showered in summery, delightful sunlight. 

"She told you to drive me back. Didn't she?" he asked expectantly. "And you're going to drive me back to that hole, ain't that right?"

I saw the wistfulness of his expression fade away when I said, "I was thinking about a little excursion first. What do you say?" 

And so we pulled off for Massachusetts. Driving no longer caused me to feel all worn out, because I had him on the passenger's seat, blithering on about the new hits on the radio, and The Beach Boys, and a group of Californian boys he met at this Camp Davis, who reminded him of The Beach Boys.  _"They were all sturdy surfers, goddamn me!"_  It must have been the first time I saw him pour his heart out and talk so much. He was gesticulating vehemently and smiling uncontrollably and widely—you'd wish he would never stop being this happy. 

I didn't want him to ever stop being this happy. 

I told him where we were going, that he was going to see the place I grew up in, and he laughed and quipped in a light-taunting way that I probably had grown up in an art gallery. I laughed at that. "I bet it's someplace nice, where you grew up," he concluded. 

"You're going to be the judge of that. Feel free to express your opinion, even if it's negative. That's what I did."

He hummed. "I will try to be positive, even if you grew up in a sty."

I raised an eyebrow for a moment of brief reflection. "Where did that optimism of yours come from?"

"The sun brings out the best of me," he announced as he sprawled in his seat lazily, stretching his arms and legs. I remembered last summer, him reading a book outside, bathed in sunlight on the fresh grass. How I rued the moment I didn't consider taking a picture of him like that. It would summarize eternal beauty perfectly. "Maybe I'll visit California, someday. Must be pretty sunny there."

The image of him lying on golden sand by the sea rose in my mind and caused me to sigh. He would be doing them a favor, bringing his splendor over to Californian beaches. "You definitely should."

There was a moment during which he felt pleased with himself and looked to me with cheekiness and a grin spread all over his face. "Are you going to take me up to that Prettyboy Lake one day?" he asked. I was surprised he even remembered the name of a lake I had mentioned once to him. 

"That's a damn good idea, pretty boy," I smiled; now only fifty percent of my attention was focused on driving.

He sat back in silence, the corners of his mouth quirking up.

"You still owe me an album, you know. I haven't forgotten about it, be sure about that. I might even pretend to forget what happened last time when you left me if you make it."

"If that is so," I said, recalling how atrocious the first weeks without him had been, "I shall start working on it today."

He recounted the story of his graduation, the people he had met all these months he'd been away, and how everything seemed to him close to becoming progressively better. And I listened with all interest, only thirty percent of me focused on driving, making sure not to miss a thing he said. 

Thus, what I can today allude to as the greatest week of my life began. I don't think I'd lived enough before that week began. 

I showed him home first and we took a stroll in the evening, around the small town I grew up in. I wanted to show him every corner, recount stories of my boyhood until he'd felt like he was brought up in the same town as me. He listened with great care, giggling and teasing me of my antics. The rest of the day it seemed to me as if we were the same age. We suddenly decided we'd known each other from the beginning of our lives. How trite does that sound?

And for weeks I hadn't picked up my Canon camera, but as soon as I had it in my hands, I knew exactly what my first photograph of him would be. I took it when he was smoking outside the house, without him noticing, but he smiled lopsidedly once he'd taken notice. There. Photograph number two.

We spent the night on the couch just because we could; entangled in his thoughts as I was, I wished sleep would never take me. 

The next day we drove to the bay near Boston, and we got stuck waiting for a great sea creature to emerge in the horizon, as is the expectation that fills you when gazing at the blue vastness. We reclined under a tree and he fell asleep in my arms and woke only when the sun was coming down, creating a pinkish grandeur in the sky. The day that I recall vividly is the day we drove to Prettyboy Lake; he was beaming all day long and talking lively. This time when he lay reading on the grass, I did not fail to capture his beauty. What a gift it was to be by his side; he was making me feel like I had finally entered his world. How perfect it was to be part of his world, words are inadequate to describe. His sumptuous world; a medley of mutinous, just-ripe thoughts and unscathed dreams. The nights filled with his affection, the days with his breathtaking smiles.

It wasn't uncalled for, that we were bound to get separated once more. Privy to that, however, when the moment came, we had already swapped roles without noticing.

He, a boy of just eighteen, was being more mature in collation to me, a man of thirty-two.

During the ride to Maryland, we had lapsed into silence; the atmosphere stagnant by the worrying thoughts, the silence just urging to keep thinking in the same fashion.

"Hold on a second," I told him just as he was about to go inside where he had resided the past few months. He waited expectantly. I took out an envelope and handed it to him. "You're eighteen now, I guess that means you can go wherever you want, ain't that right?"

He studied the piece of paper inside the envelope closely. In the end, he flashed a wide smile, looking up at me. "Yeah. You got that right." 

Clueless in relation to whether he would come at the event I had invited him, I shrugged. "I don't know if you will be able to turn up—I can give you a ride but I understand if you can't make it or don't want to."

"I'll get in touch. This is coupla months away," he replied solemnly, thinking it over.

"You know my address," I pointed out, "keep in contact if you want. I'll write you back."

He raised an inquisitive eyebrow and smiled lopsidedly. "Will you, now? I can hardly believe that."

He was referring to the inexistent letter he had never received from me. I smirked. "You just wait and see."

Our smiles gradually faltered from the moment he looked back to the house. I got his suitcase out of the car and gave it to him; I thought to quit lingering, because the more you linger, the more it is bound to astound you, how lonely you can get from one moment to the next. 

I didn't bother to make it evident that we were most likely not to run into one another. Keeping in mind that he wasn't particularly fond of goodbyes, I didn't bother mumbling one, either. We simply gave a nod and trudged off; he, into the unfamiliar residence, me in my sedan. I drove off and kept looking at the house through the rear-view, envious of whoever got to see and talk to him every day. And the people who had breakfast with him on the same table every morning; I was jealous of them, too. The people he encountered in the shops, on the street. How is it fair, that they saw more of his face every day, than I did?


	14. Chapter 14

The New York City light breeze blew and I felt a sense of liberation sweep over me like a tidal wave.

"Things are beginning to look up, Frank. Things are really looking up for you now," Robert mumbled, standing there, still immersed in rereading a letter from Stable Gallery with his glasses perched on the tip of his nose. I wanted to point out how he was beginning to resemble an elder right then.

"Uh-huh," I uttered as I focused on the evening sun that brought back memories of the inexplicable summer I had had.

"Blasé, my friend. You're doing it again." He recommenced the reading of the letter and looked as blown away by it as before, whispering to himself little hints of rejoicing. "I mean, you're going from Weston Gallery, to Pace, to Stable Gallery! You were on this week's Saturday Evening Post. This is going to be phenomenal. You can only go up from here, Frank, I'm telling you."

The sun was beginning to sink, sowing the seeds of a remarkable purple in the horizon. My tongue was getting ready to let my thoughts slip away; "I don't see how I can't go down. I will forever be free to cause trials and tribulations. It's my prerogative to go down."

"Well, you're a pessimist, so I shouldn't have expected anything more from you." Robert chuckled in a hearty way. "Even if things go downhill. It can only augur well, as it will bring even more attention to you and, consequently, all this. Your work is going to be displayed no matter what. Now, don't  _sigh_  like that."

"Why me?" I phrased in a way that hid indeed a double entendre. "Why not Andy Warhol?" That did not hide a double entendre. Why me, indeed, and not any other superficial artist. 

Robert eyed me and his eyebrows snapped together at my innocent comment that expressed a mere doubt I had had. He straightened up and with a defensive voice said, "Because Andy Warhol is emulating you, you ignorant melancholic. You would know that, had you picked up the phone in August. What were you doing, in the first place? Lana was commuting all the summer, she said you were to your folks. But I thought you told me your folks were off road tripping!"

"One of my most valuable, recreational assets is solitude."

He didn't commentate on that. Instead, he ignored me and produced a magazine from his case and handed it over to me, open at a page he'd marked by folding the top corner of it. "Take a look at this  _Marilyn Diptych_ —may she rest in peace—and tell me. Tell me: doesn't that bear semblance to something else you've seen?"

I took some time to look at it; then, once I was done, I lit a cigarette and continued to inspect it for as long as I deemed it would take to deplete Robert's frayed patience. I concluded, "Acrylic, isn't it?"

"Yes, Frank, yes—but that is not my point!"

I knew exactly what his point was, but I carried on trifling with him. "Nice use of silk-screening, too."

"Only that is  _exactly_  what you implemented on your last three works," he said as he couldn't hold himself back anymore. "And he got a solo exhibition on that and a few damn soup cans!"

"I don't claim to own the technique of screen printing. And also, I'm going to stop you there—I liked the soup cans."

"It's not  _art_ , Frank."

"Everything can be art. What, and my latest work was artistically aware?" He argued that, yes, they most definitely were, but I could hardly believe that—Robert was only vouching for me, without a warrant to do so. My latest work had been using the same method of silk-screening as well, but my art in its core had taken an utterly political twist. 

Never mind my art, though, he asked me, "What did you do with the invitations for your exhibition I gave you in June? Did you distribute them?"

"I sent two to my friend Ray and his wife, one to Lana but I doubt she'll turn up. And two to her son. I didn't know what to do with the other two you gave me."

"This  _is_  going to be big. Perhaps we should send one to that Warhol and see if he shows up." I shook my head in major disapproval—I didn't want to start a fuss. We went back inside in the gallery and a few eyes affixed on me. I felt underdressed when I took a look around at the people but, at the same time, I was utterly indifferent. A senior couple approached my friend and me, the woman in a red dress telling me, "This is a major success, you must be very proud, Mr. Iero—" her accent was British— "Now, my husband and I are art collectors from—"

A man piped up from behind, "Mr. Iero, would you consider your piece, 'The Che Guevaras', to have a political message? What was your initial intention?"

"Mr. Iero," someone emerged from behind me and I almost stirred, "what encouraged you to try out silkscreen for the chromatic portrait of John F. Kennedy?"

"Were you inspired by the party in Madison Square, celebrating Kennedy's birthday?"

"Mr. Iero, sir, what is your view on his presidency so far?"

"Would you consider yourself a communist, Mr. Iero?"

"What do you think of Mr. Warhol's  _Marilyn Diptych,_ Mr. Iero? Do you see the parallelism?"

It was during moments like these that my dear friend, Robert, would try to conceal his mischievous smirk and raise an eyebrow at me and the pandemonium that had started from nowhere. And as we would drive off to get home in the dark of the night, he would tell me to make a new life out of this. Relocate to New York City. Recall the vibrant nightlife. Get away from my marriage. 

I will admit, I wasn't exactly opposed to that idea, even back then.

"You never seemed to fit the bill—I don't know what got you so interested in getting married in the first place," he would tell me. "Now, I'm a married man myself. But were I and my wife not together, I wouldn't plow on trying to find a new one. It's not like that, you know? You don't need a ring around your finger, my dear friend."

I had a dense desire to act out my feelings in punching Robert. However, I didn't act on that impulse. He was right; I never seemed to be suitable for marital purposes. But the thing was, I was too apathetic, especially then, to end whatever botch I had made of my marriage to Lana. 

I continued to think of my pretty boy every time I would glance at the sky and the sun and I was conveyed back to that remarkable summer. I received a few words from him in the middle of October via telegram:  _'Can make it on the exhibition after all. Moved to gnarly D.C. with Mikey. Address letters to...'_  And that is how I learned that there was something fishy going on, because when I next spoke to Lana, the following Monday when she happened to be home, she told me her sister from Maryland was raving mad. "She wouldn't tell me what's going on. Only that Gerard is very hard to manage. What do you think is going on? Did he mention anything this summer?" she would say. 

She eventually came across the telegram from Gerard, due to my imprudence of leaving it on top of my dresser, and she came to be very displeased about it. It turned out like this, that the Gerard in full bloom had decided to flee from his home in Maryland, due to the fact that he was still being restricted by his aunt, or so he told Lana over the telephone. 

And tell me how I could hide my smile right then; I couldn't. He was just as defiant as an adult as he was as a seventeen-year-old. 

Anyway, Lana did not attend the big night at Stable Gallery, but that did not cause but a two-second-long surprise to me. Our lives had become separate, if they weren't enough, to begin with. 

And as Robert was raving on about what it meant for my career, having a solo exhibition, I was frantically looking around to meet the eyes that I longed to meet. Sadly, no, I'm not referring to my friend, Ray, although he did turn up and I was overly glad.

The defiant blossom was in the remarkable stage of blooming when he arrived at the gallery. I was almost stunned when I noticed him from the other end of the room, wearing a brown vest over his white dress shirt, having combed his hair—he did strike one as an adult. I noticed that the sides of his face were a little more dark and stubbly than the last time I'd seen him and God, I almost had a stroke right on the spot. He, along with his familiar friend, walked in with a broad smile and I didn't waste any more time from him and me as I hurried toward him. 

"Four months, no seen, ol' sap," he said but I still couldn't get over the fact that he looked so grown. I hadn't realized I'd put my hand on his shoulder until he'd reached to pat it and I felt electrified by his delicate touch.

"Well—haven't you _grown_ ," I pointed out, smiling helplessly.

"Of all the people, I thought you'd be the last to say that."

I knew his friend, too. Oliver Key was the name of the boy that had managed to thrive as well, from the last time I'd seen him. Of course, his transition wasn't as majestic as that of the Prettyboy—I'm telling you, I wanted to scream on top of my voice how much his transformation had astonished me. They were both quite interested in the exhibition, even though I couldn't be more disinterested and it was  _my_  exhibition, mind you. Somehow, I managed to get Oliver Key rather engrossed in what Robert was saying all the damn night, so that I could offer Gerard a walk outside to have him for myself for a while. I practically shunned all magazines and interviewers that night for him.

I took him just around the block and he said that he liked New York City. 

"It kind of suits you, you know," he commented. 

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I could picture you walking around leisurely on these streets, meeting people. Full of life. They look like they would be in line with your wishes. Like you'd converse with them all night."

My mind seemed to comprehend exactly what he was talking about. "Squirrel Hill was never my ideal—" I stopped as I realized I was talking about the place he'd grown up in. Instead, I chose to focus on apologizing: "But then I'm terribly sorry I made a complete botch of things."

"Well, I'm not really less of a troublemaker myself. So, you shouldn't apologize to me. Mother's never been much of a saint either." His look was fixed forward, eyes shining as the light from the street lamps reflected in them. "So, listen, I—" there was a little pinprick of apprehension in him as he stopped walking and I did the same— "I'm entering college mid-year, as things have brought it."

There was a pause.

"Spring semester is just fine. Second semester still means a fresh start," I told him in case he was in need of some consolation, though that didn't seem to be the case. He was never in need of consolation.

"It's not that," he made known, scratching the back of his neck. "I just wanted to make sure it's fine with you—I mean,  _this_. This doesn't mean  _a_   _lot_  to you, does it?"

I was beginning to get confused. "What do you mean? Of course.  _Of_   _course_ , you mean a lot to me. Frankly, I think you mean a hell of a lot to every single person that has the pleasure to meet you."

"I don't mean it like that, Frank." He huffed a short laugh. "I mean—It's not a secret that we're not in a relationship or anything like that. Right?" I was beginning to feel uneasy as I slowly understood what he was driving at. "We can meet whenever you want and I when I'm available, but more than that—I mean, you being married to my mother would basically be cheating, were we like that. But we're not. Right?"

It took me a moment to fathom that. I nodded. "No. We're not like that."

"Right." He paused as if he needed time to fathom that as well. "I guess I wanted—Yeah, that is all. I don't have anything else to say on that." 

I walked closer to him and ventured to lace my fingers through his combed hair, and I almost had a second stroke when a little curl appeared on the corner of his mouth. We walked on as I put my arm around his waist. There was nothing in the night restricting me—there was nobody telling us we couldn't be the way we were right then, strolling down the ill-illuminated, grey streets. So, I took him just in front of the Carnegie Hall and let him bright my night with his plans of the future—he talked of books and politicians and philosophers. The whole night was enlightened by his exuberance. 

I wished he could talk to me and only me, forever.


	15. Chapter 15

Through my antics and their ramifications, I learned that melancholy is but an evil whisper on a summery night of loneliness, but it falls upon you like a pall, and lingers.

How quickly one can shift and convey oneself through time, using the brilliance of words. How petty and trivial you can make everything sound by narrating incidents, that have had such a severe impact on your psyche, you cannot go through a day without thinking of them. Language is truly an abomination. Language is the most useless and, at the same time, malevolent creation of mankind. I'd rather live in Babel sometimes, rather than anyplace else. But why do I choose to rave about language, now, in the middle of my memoirs, I hear you say. Precisely, reader, because I am in the middle of my memoirs, and my emotions are conquering me, my own mind detests me. 

And it all began after the roaring success.

After the 'roaring success' in Stable Gallery, as a magazine put it, Robert was awaiting the big kahuna. I, of course, could not be more laid back, or 'blasé' as my friend often put it. The roaring success resulted in a greater profit, one I had never had before. I was getting quite a lot of attention, even from where I was situated, in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Next to Cooper, I was spending some time, or rather all of it. Days passed with the taste of whiskey in my mouth, the delicacy of his touch, the pleasantness of his company, the rather annoying chirping of cicadas. Robert dropped me a line, sent an anxious telegram to my mother's, which she hid from me for several days. It was something along the lines of: _'Come back. Quick. Big road ahead awaits you. No more of S.H._ ' And S.H. being an abbreviation of Squirrel Hill, in case you failed to notice. I telephoned him, therefore, the very next day and inquired what it was all about, and the response I got was him being garrulous over _invitations,_  and,  _God, so many telephone calls!_  And,  _Frank, you're no longer an artist that goes by unnoticed_  andblah-blah. Not to forget the critic article by someone who had attended the exhibition at Stable that read: 

_'Mr. Iero is not omitting to make it obvious, that he is reinventing the art of photography and the fact that he is doing it in an absolutely ludicrous way. However, the lack of desire to boast about his achievements or the way he chooses to ignore his latest success as if trying really hard to liquidate it, prompts me to say that he is rather blas_ _é_ _of character. What a shame! Since Mr. Warhol's latest statement, Mr. Iero remains unresponsive.'_

"What a shame? What a shame! By the by, I am not ashamed of blotting out pointless interviews or statements alluding to me by pseudo-allies."

"They did call you blasé and you _are_ rather blasé, as I have always stood by it," said Robert, extending his arm to fetch us a cab. The wind blew his hair away from his face, as the cab came to a hilt before us. "You better start showing some desire to be there, at your exhibitions, because people are getting quite skeptical. Once they have fathomed that I am not the Frank Iero, they get rather disappointed, you should see their faces. It's not a good thing, I'll tell you, having oodles of pairs of eyes boring into you because you're not the person they want to have in front of them."

My reluctance heaved a sigh out of me. "It's not my fault people are often quite boring. And muckle-mouthed."

"You didn't seem to think so last time at Stable. Yeah. I saw you looking around, wide-eyed and all. What was that all about? Surprised by how much attention you've been getting lately?"

"It was different then," I had to argue, feebly so, however. I couldn't explain the cause of my felicity to Robert, but one particular someone on this planet knows how I couldn't wait to see a certain person that night. My driveling excitement. 

He still wrote to me, back then, my pretty boy. He wrote every two weeks and I couldn't wait for his next letter every time. He was basking in the greatness of thriving. He was opening his eyes and I longed to be there with him. Once he wrote two pages on how beautiful a single cloud in the clear sky looked, how he perceived it. He had such a way with words, that my words seem feeble and inadequate every time I describe him and his ways. He had an affinity for plays lately, said he was going to go to so many when he would move out. San Francisco; he was planning already. 

_'Dear Frank,_

_I wish I could be there with you or that you could be here with me, I don't mind either. You won't believe me, but_ _I need you as much as the soil needs the torrents of rain to thrive._ _However, I'm leaving soon, there is nothing here for me. I will find myself in California. I wish you could come with me but I know how things are for you, at the moment. I will not stop missing you, I fear; I'm missing some sense in my life._

_Write to me. I entreat you._

_Yours,_ _Prettyboy.'_

He had grown to use that name, so as to conceal his identity, lest worse days were lurking in the vicinity. How glad I was to read those letters. I read them again and again and hid them in the back of my drawer, a special place for them.

I thrived, too, however, in terms of my career. Soon, Robert was pushing me to spend my money on an apartment in Manhattan. It was to be a good investment, he said, even if I didn't go there ever so often. So, I did. I stepped into a spacious, apt apartment and thought 'This is it, this is going to be the studio', and whenever I walked down the 68th Street, I stood and loitered and a sense of fulfillment rushed through me like blood rushed in my veins. It became The Studio. On New Year's, Robert and I were clanging our glasses of champagne together, as time brushed against our senses and minds. It was the year of compact and bottled-up vexing feelings that were soon due to burst.

There was one month, April, when I came across Lana's face exactly zero times. I was out and around with a major success in Sholto Gallery, and with Cooper not being tied up by work, my April was wonderfully adorned with Virginia fresh breeze and premature warming sun as we took the road and it took us, we drove to see some rural. Massachusetts wasn't a preferred destination at that time. So we did stay in West Virginia for a little longer than planned; the car broke down, we got held up by the storm on the last day of our stay. I wasn't rather keen on returning to Squirrel Hill, thus my companion and I decided on leaving for a little longer and we visited Kentucky. There, the weather took us by surprise, but we remained, nonetheless. In total, we were gone for a whole month and neither of us had made the valiant effort of contacting our wives.

My husbanddom, it was at its peak. I returned to Squirrel Hill for only a day, before taking off again for New York. Two nights of uplifting words by guests, one morning of cheering with Robert ensued, before I drove off once more for Squirrel Hill.

"So busy, are you?" Lana had been wondering, a hint of  _sardonicisme_  in her smile as she read the day's paper with her cold, neglected coffee on the side table. 

"I'm either reaching the pinnacle of my career, or I have done so, long ago."

"At thirty-four?" She laughed. "What a career. One must grow so old to reach its pinnacle."

For one, I was not thirty-four. I was thirty-three at the time I'm referring to.

There was something malevolent dwelling deep inside me, in my chest, something forcing its way out and it was soon to be wrought out of me. In one way or another, violently or placidly. When I told this to Jack Cooper, adding to the fact that Lana might be suspicious of something, he held a calm face and a sense of expectancy hung over him as he released a sigh. 

"If anything should happen, it will happen in the nick of time," he seemed to think. His face was so unspeculative as if he had mulled over it so many times before. And little did I know, he might have been facing the same tribulations with his marriage. We were, after all, in a much similar situation. He went on to say, "There ain't much you can do, Frank. Unless you're thinkin' of headin' back and tryna fix anythin'."

"I have never been less willing to do such thing."

I'd never seen such look in his eyes before as he turned to eye at me then; it was knowing and wistful. Grief dwelt on it, traces of fear thrived at the creases of his forehead. It was as if he had his mind focused on something he knew he couldn't alter. Such a juxtaposition, for Jack Cooper; he was the most resolute person. If he happened to want something, it was a matter of time before he had his finger on it. 

"You know what's gonna happen, then. It's liable not to go our way," said he.

And it did, indeed. On a very sunless day in June, on Squirrel Hill, I walked into the house to find the sitting room in disorder. The small canape beside the window had piles of my boxes and my past photographs on it; the red upholstery was slovenly covering half of the piece of furniture. On the floor lay the cushions, along with other photographs, scattered. God, it would make me reconsider placing them back inside their boxes—I brooded over finally throwing them out. Furthermore, I discovered letters on the carpeted floor,  _my_  letters. Uncreased and opened, their envelopes were thrown into a pile on the side. Some were directed to The Studio, the new ones mostly. However, two postcards were written by me, directed to the Cooper household. I didn't know how they could possibly lie on my living room floor. The array of nameless letters lead to the washing room, and as I approached in wary steps, a cold breeze blew on my face just before Lana made an appearance. 

Her hair was disheveled, just as much of a mess she was, like the living room. She smoked a cigarette unattractively and her unoccupied hand was placed on her hip scoldingly. My worry dissipated into anger at once.

Remember me saying, I despise language.

"What are my photographs doing on the floor?" I demanded to know immediately, noticing a postcard held tightly in her hand. Her disfigured face, contorted with emotion, was not a pretty sight as she stared wordlessly.

She then spoke words with poison on her tongue. "This is  _so_  entertaining."

Clueless, I uttered, "What is?"

She lifted her hand with the postcard and glanced between it and me before beginning to read aloud: "' _You know I cannot stand sunless days, nor more of this miserable Squirrel Hill. I can meet you on the 9th, drop me a line, tell me if you're free. Let us go far_ —'" there she paused for an almost evil laugh, " _far away from this dingy misery. Once again. Yours, Frank._ '" I observed her, soundlessly, when she dismissed the postcard and opened a letter she had left on a dresser beside her. "This one is one of my favorites. Listen to this:  _'My dearest friend, I hear the sun is shining on WV. How about heading down for a while, don't know how much. I want as much as I can get of you. It has been twenty days since the last time I saw you and I miss you terribly. Please, let us go away. Yours, Frank.'_ " And then: "What a scandalous worm you are. _"_

"Where did you find these?" I inquired with urgency, as these letters and postcards must have been stowed away from other eyes in Jack Cooper's house.

"And how I thought she was my friend. And how I thought you were _just busy_  all this time," said she, tone drenched in irony. "Let's read one by your partner in crime. She writes—" I frowned at the mention of the 'she' and a little apprehension slipped out of me— "She writes here:  _'Work's tiring, this week's endless. How about Wednesday 8th? Can't wait to get away. I can meet you at Surly Creek. Your friend.'_ This one was in your drawer. The other ones were over in Claire's house, in her husband's drawer—God, I wonder how the man didn't find them in there."

With those words, I was mollified. Lana had actually thought that it was her friend writing to me, when in reality, it was her friend's husband. Thankfully, Jack Cooper never signed with his name at the end, unlike me. What a funny outcome; ridiculous. 

"And what about this one? This one was in _our_  house, in _your_ drawer! I haven't read it yet but you sure will stay to read it with me, won't you?" She held one letter and the beige paper made me realize immediately; she was holding something else. Something not written by Cooper. My heartbeat sped up increasingly, I could drop on the spot. " _'Dear Frank, I wish you were here with me to see everything blossom so horribly in this exquisite environment. My hours are running, depleted, in this pigsty_ —' And how poetic she is, that one—  _'I wish I could evade and stay with you. Until then, I still am_ —'"

"Lana—" I tried to cut her off from reading the last piece. She was frowning.

Drawling out the words, she read: " _'Yours, Prettyboy.'"_ Her frowning, stormy countenance directed at me. Her cigarette was burning between her fingers; she almost had forgotten about it. "What is the meaning of this?" she asked, holding the letter up. 

There was a prolonged, heavy silence, burdened by uneasiness. The clock just above her head ticked away, but I certainly didn't think that any time was passing. Yet to think I had imposed all this upon myself.

"Who do you think I am? Your dupe?" she spat angrily, my fair accuser. "You're detestable. You're unbelievable—I gave you everything I could give and this is what I get!" Her hand rose at once, with the letters and postcards in the air. "Well, I ain't no longer your gull, you lewd fool. You're vile." What I murmured next shall be omitted, I believe it is best that way. She insisted and demanded to know: "What is the meaning of this, Frank? Explain to me at once, will you? I deserve it. I deserve to know."

Pause. Seconds of silence felt like eons.

"I've been unfaithful," I made my case. 

And as it hadn't even crossed her mind she gasped, swallowing back her venom. Her eyes welled up, shining. With a heartbreaking sound, she tore the words apart, tearing the scraps of paper into pieces, unmercifully. Her loathing arose again, as she shouted on top of her voice: "I should've known! You went missing so many days—you and _her!_  She was never around on the days you weren't here—" She was referring to Claire Cooper, with whom I had not had an affair. Not once in my life. However, it was possible, then, that Claire Cooper had been cheating on her husband. And I realized, Jack had been right all along; it could never go our way. I was internally bearing the rebuke for the persuasion of a minor, then for being adulterous. It could never go my way, yet Lana was only throwing the lights on the fact that I had been unfaithful.

"And who is this 'prettyboy'? A name you came up with for some...random waitress or what! Oh, Lord—what a sick monster you are, I could never—How did you ever seem, in my eyes, good?" She had begun weeping then, hysterically, raving on about my unspeakable capers. And what could I do then? The truth was surfacing, but not whole. I was almost tempted to let it all show, display it like a photograph in a gallery, I thought I could be liberated from this ordeal, once and for all. My reputation could not remain unsullied. I could only let my fate smite me with my iniquities, but I would be free of this.

"Lana," I murmured then.

Her cigarette, almost burned up to the butt, slipped from her fingers. She released a cry of indignation and, madly, she stubbed it out, pressing her naked toe against the white carpet. The ash darkened and remained, blemishing the floor covering. "What? What could it be—anything worse than this?" Her voice prompted me.

I then announced placidly, all sense neglecting me, "It was a man. I cheated on you with men."

She neither answered nor turned, but merely stood with her mouth agape. My heart was in my mouth. A most peculiar stupefaction had inundated me unspeakably—and I thought of liberation, the feeling you get by getting something off your chest. But weighing the differences between that make-believe feeling and what I was undergoing in reality, I couldn't help but notice the enormous contrast.

"I will go out until the sun has set," she announced, frightfully feigning calm, "and I want you to be gone by the time I am back. Take everything you want. I don't want to see you _ever_ again."

She didn't venture to spew another insult, but I took her desertion as a personal affront. Her footsteps sounded off and away, then the slam of the door let me know I was at final peace. There was nothing else to argue over, there was no more of the uneasy silence of two pretend-lovers on the same bed. In a sense, I had been unchained. My sojourn in Squirrel Hill would soon come to an end. I was expected to be ashamed, yet I wasn't. The vestige of my confrontation with my last wife was a sheer bitter taste in my throat and mouth. I ascended the stairs for one last time in the house and headed to our past bedroom. My first move was to take everything from my drawer, which I used to keep locked, but with time passing by, I ceased to lock it. Somehow I was glad she had come over those letters. Somehow, I was glad Jack Cooper didn't keep his postcards very inaccessible; I had a feeling he had done so on purpose.

I took all of Gerard's letters with me and once I came across the ace of spades, a smile spread across my face with the blowing of the wind. I was glad. 

Ruined, tarnished but glad.

I drove off, as warned, to The Studio, which attracted all felicity that night; it shone. How I wished I could get in touch with my Gerard at once. But in The Studio, I lodged alone that night. I emptied bottles of alcohol and regretted being alone terribly. I was looking out of the window, admiring and longing after the vivacity of the city. I began to weep helplessly.

Melancholy had fallen upon me like a pall, and it lingered, uninvited.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to say thanks to those who are being patient with my updates. School's coming to an end soon, so no worries, I plan on updating more regularly then. Thanks for reading y'all, enjoy the update xx (Feedback is always welcome/Correct me, if you find any errors, since I am my own editor...Sometimes, it gets tiring.)

I was under the fallacious impression that after divorce, the screen would go black. 'And now for something completely different' would flash in white. That with the words:  _"Divorce granted, on this day, on the 26th of May 1963"_ my life would start anew, as a bachelor once again, I would be permitted the things a wedded man would not. Yet I needed a week or two to come around, to realize I had been living the same life as an unwed man, even in the practical bonds of marriage. You could say I was a pitiful sap. I was still the very same Frank Iero, the photographer, the artist. My life was still the same, missing the same old piece as always. I had separated from Lana completely, after she had made attempts to scandalize me. She soon learned that there was no point in trying to divulge secrets about my life, because word would get around, she was the fool to marry a debauched man such as me. It was not of benefit to her to be so bold as to do such a thing. 

With Robert being on vacation and Jack Cooper having the same trouble with his wife and all, I was rendered on the precipice of melancholy, and perhaps I would have turned to a drinking habit a bit too soon, had it not been for a letter I received a week after the divorce was all done. A letter which I do not happen to have today—it must've gotten caught in the fire of The Studio, back in '69—but I sure know it existed, because it hauled me to my feet. ' _Heard the divorce came in. Finally.'_ And then, I remember vividly the following lines in black ink:  _'Did she find out? Was it me?'_  

It made me leave The Studio and go as far as get in my automobile and drive off. 

We met halfway. We had to. 

My good-old blue sedan broke down just before I could enter the municipality of Georgetown, and I abandoned it to roam like a weary wight without a clue as to where I was heading, kicking sticks and stones with my feet and admiring the Front Range that rose above the skyline with a perfect pallidness. It all happened incidentally; you wouldn't believe it if I told you but it did happen. You see, there I was, wandering on the mountain pass, and there he was, driving up a hill in a '57 Chevy. You wouldn't think he had a permit but he did, my  _God_. He could  _drive_ , Heavens, can you take in the magnitude of that? He coulddrive. I was away from him for months and suddenly, I was there and he could drive.

"When did Georgetown become a touristic destination?" I found myself talking humorously, implementing a coping mechanism, in spite of my extravagant exultation. Yes, we had compromised to meet in Denver, not that far from Georgetown, but the coincidence was scarcely imaginable, the timing was unbelievable. How phenomenal. Only with him did I have such experiences. 

"Turns out, it's a small world," said he as he rested his elbow so leisurely on the margin of the open window in his car. What an extraordinary phenomenon he was himself. "Decided to go for a little stroll on the mountains, ey? Get in, ol' man and let's get bookin'."

"How does one find the time," I wondered upon slumping in the Chevy in reverence, breathing in the warm air in the passenger seat smothered by scorching Colorado sun. "Sure like the car."

"Groovy, isn't she? It's Oliver's old man's," said he and drove off, wind blowing to our faces.

"Really? What'd you do then?"

"Bailed his son, I s'pose." Creases on his forehead appeared as he talked. "Well, Oliver was looking real bad while I was in D.C. and all, and when I came back on Squirrel Hill last time, he was all around the bend. The old man, he was just looking out that his son were sure to go to college, so I made sure Oliver would string along—" It was something about that Oliver Key kid, when I learned Gerard was lodging with him, it mollified me. Dared I imagine a world where the Prettyboy would be all by himself in the other end of the country, I would not be able to plow on with my everyday routine. They were going to college together, looking out that they could secure a job soon and get themselves an apartment, in San Francisco, where they inhabited and occupied the lousy streets like the rest of the undergraduates. What a thrill, what a sense of suspense it brought to me, the recounting of his and his friend's escapade from Misery-Squirrel Hill. 

But then a tinge of reservation swept just above me as I came across the lost fact in my mind. "So, what'd you tell him, then? About taking his car," I inquired as the car whisked by the hilltops in great velocity, going like the shrilling wind.

"I told him I wanted to see  _you_  this summer," he said, in all honesty. Only then when he rubbed the cleft of his chin did I begin to examine the more stubbly his face had gotten.

"So, you told him 'bout this? Me and you?" 

An offhanded, "Yeah," rolled off his tongue.

"And what'd he tell you?"

The chuckle that escaped his lips deterred every apprehension in me. Then: "He said: 'Never trust anybody over thirty' while we ambled down the Upper Haight, both in paisley and all. Spiffy. Just all the guys down there. Full of Yippies, San Fran. You ought to see it someday." 

And I laughed, because, in reality, it had just dawned on me that there was no reason to get overwrought. There was no reason to get in a fluster, because I trusted his choices back then, and I thought everything he did, he had brooded over beforehand. And he must have done so. And a curl on his mouth appeared as I reached out to caress the back of his ear, warm and covered by his dark hair which he had decided to let it grow longer, to let go of that 40s conservative cut he once had, or rather Lana had talked him into having.

"Where're we heading to, by the by?" I asked, despite him seeming lost in his mulling over something.

And then he said the words that came out of nowhere, and the smilelessness of his face frightened me: "Why did Mother break it off with you?"

Taken aback, I proposed that, "We can talk about it later."

His steadfast eyes were on the road; my hand, still rejoicing the warmness of the back of his head. 

"But I wanna know now."

"Not now, Gerard," I insisted. "I can tell you all about it once we reach our destination. Which is still a mystery to me. Where _are_ we going? Headin' east?"

"She found out about the cheating, didn't she?" The words were rushing to stream out of his mouth, as if driven by the force of a torrent. He huffed a laugh in response to my going quiet and asked, "Did you tell her it was a woman?"

"No," I shook my head with vehemency, "no, I told her I've been unfaithful. With men." There was a moment of stillness in the air, as he seemed to slow down the car a bit, but not completely.

He threw me a fleeting look, ambiguous, and then he said, "You told anybody else yet?"

Again, I shook my head, then retracted my hand from his body and observed the revealing road before us. "No. I do not intend to do so. Why would I?"

"Why not?" His response was immediate and staggering. 

"Well, why would I?"

"Well, why would you want to repress it?" 

He had a point, one could not quite point at it, but there was just so much at stake for no reason. I assumed San Francisco was more of a tolerant community, was that it? Truth be told, I never comprehended the reasons to make it known. The reasons alluded to my own self-indulgence, which I deemed trivial and not worth bothering about. If I had all I could ever ask of male friendships and relationships, tell me then, why should I publicize something that could only cause all hell to break loose? Next moment, nobody would be coming to my shows, nobody would criticize nor buy my work. Let alone the fact that I could lose a great deal of valuable friendships. How could that ever be beneficial to me? Gerard seemed to have a different approach to these kinds of things. But he was Gerard. If he didn't have that self-reliance, that attitude to anyone who did not tolerate his ways, he would not be the Prettyboy, like that. It was that belief in himself that provided the centerpiece for that exquisitely embellished personality. But it was to no avail, ever trying to analyze him and his ways. Why try to vivisect that personality, if it leaves one in such wonder when shrouded in ambiguity?

We entered Kansas after a long drive. Gerard was having fun by horsing around with the poor locals in Garden City and telling them we were looking for a flying metal plate. Poor, old man who worked at the gas station bought it and his face went ashen white. But we had our fun; and it was proof that Gerard could have everybody gullible at his feet, since more than three people believed his story. And we drove on and stayed overnight at some motel. The lighting was cheap, the bed unyielding, but all night, I was enveloped in a warmness; such as his, I tell you, there is nothing alike in the world. Behind closed blinds, nobody could see us. 

The next morning was hasty as we quickly took off for Kansas City. I recall him saying that Kansas City could one day be like New York City, if anybody was willing to wear his or her ass down to the nub to set it up. Our next stopover was in Blue Springs, Missouri, where I headed to the post office to make the valiant effort of sending a postcard up home to my mother, who I knew was soon leaving with her husband for a month in Bergamo, Italy, which used to be a common summer holiday destination for my family. Grandparents of my father had had a house there, just before immigrating to the US before The Great War—that was something Gerard inquired on further with great intrigue. And it was then that a thought came to my mind, but I stowed it away for a while. Few days later, we reached the districts of Pennsylvania. It seemed like neither of us wished to enter the state. How close we were at drab Squirrel Hill. Reluctance prickled under my skin as we made entrance to Grove City, when I finally decided that:  _no, let us take another route to Massachusetts at once._  And that, we did.

So, we made our intricate way through West Virginia to Maryland, from Maryland to Delaware, from Delaware to New Jersey, from New Jersey to New York, and finally—it was still  _okay,_  as long as it was still June—from there to Adams County. My stepfather happened to be home, sitting on his armchair all alone, sipping at his ice-cool beer and fawning over the pictures on the mantelpiece.

"Now, Glenn, this here is Gerard. Lana's son, you remember Lana," I introduced simply, enough to get my old man's attention. His red cheeks were something that caught one's attention at an instant, but it was something natural about old Glenn; he looked like that each and every day of his life.

"Your new mentee, I s'pose, kid," said Glenn. "Well, ev'ry pal of Frank's is gladly an' always welcome! Now, tell us, greenhorn. Has Frank-boy 'ere been drivin' you up the wall with 'is fine art all summer?"

"Not at all, sir," rejoined my courteous 'mentee'.

"We've been doing some traveling," I explained redundantly, to avoid the subject matter. To avoid, in fact, any further prying questions about my relations with him. I added hastily, "Gerard is majoring in English, Glenn."

"Ah. You know, my own little boy did the same thing. Funny how he found himself being a lawyer, after all. Funny thing, fate. Now, listen  _closely_ , greenhorn. I'll tell you all about fate. When I was of age, back in the day, I wasn't  _subjected_  to the draft 'cause of my old man, so I  _teed off_ by gettin' myself on the  _oil rigs_ , and  _that_  is actually how I became the foreman's  _favorite_ , 'cause favoritism was somethin' us _roughnecks_  had to put up with, back in the day, 'cause  _that's_  how roughnecking—"

I left Gerard with my stepfather just when I heard the thud of the door closing. And there she was, my mother, standing at the doorway, hair tied up in a bun and red sunglasses on. Her floral-design dress brought attention to the curves of her hips in a dainty fashion. One moment she was looking for the keys she had left, forgotten, hanging at the door, and then she was gasping over her dropping her groceries all over the carpeted hallway. My mother; perpetually in a muddle. Funny but loving mother.

"Lord grant me patience—" she said under her breath before I hunched down to help her retrieve her groceries. And then—"Frankie, boy! Oh, son, where have you been!" She took me to her arms; and down fell her stuff onto the floor, once again. "Oh, on such short notice! Tell me, you haven't seen my keys, by chance, have you, dear?" 

I provided my aid by simply swinging the door open and she gasped, thanking me.

"Mother—" said I, but she abandoned me in the hallway to head to our shabby kitchen. "It is wonderful to see you, too. How come you're still here?"

"We leave on Monday morning. Are you coming along? Oh, Frankie, boy, you won't believe the emotional state I am in, striving to get Glenn to pack his suitcase before it's last minute! He doesn't appreciate it when I drag him all the way to Bergamo— _Why can't we go to sweet ol' Kansas this year?_  I hear him say every day _._  He grouses as much as you when you were five years old!" She went on garrulously, placing the things she'd bought on counters.

"Kansas is not all that bad, if I may say so myself," said I but to no avail. 

And there it was, the look she gave me, as if I was a rugrat once again and she was scolding me. "I know Kansas ain't all that bad, Frankie, but Glenn's shack in the middle of ol' ranches, in tough comparison to our country house in Lombardy; Kansas ain't putting up much of a fight. Is it, son?"

I omitted expressing my opinion. "Non lo so."

"Sai benissimo, figliolo." Shaking her head, she let out a heavy sigh. "But you are not here to hear of my disputes with my husband, are you, Frankie, boy? What, has the wife issued a restraining order yet? Because if that is the case, then you ain't crashing in my house for the rest of time, or until you've found another gal to marry, son. Give it up. Marriage is not for everyone."

"I'll pretend your words do not afflict me, dear mother. Though you are depreciating me," I made known subtly, but she didn't seem to mind any. It was then that I developed a plan in my head but I did not yet know how to commit to it. "Why don't you and I go to the living room," I tried to coax her, "I want you to meet someone." And we walked toward the room, she took me to her arms and said it was always fine if I could not find anybody else to turn to but her. And then she said something of Anna McNeill Whistler's mother, and that the painter had admitted that 'a mother is the holiest thing alive'. You never know with my mother, is the thing, when she detests you or when she treasures you. She is really a wonder, that woman. 

"Oh, are you the lovely Way boy?" cried out Mother, interrupting her loquacious husband who was talking to Gerard, but Gerard didn't seem to mind the incessant talking. "Look at you—what a handsome man you've become! Oh, I recall you were the center of attention at my son's wedding! Who was looking at the couple? Absolutely nobody! All eyes were on you—my niece could not get hers off of you, and my  _sister_ —"

"Mother, this is Gerard. Gerard, my mother." 

"His  _mentee_ , Laura. Damn well cultured. Boy's been  _around_ , I'll tell ya," explained Glenn, eyes bugging out and pointing a thumb to Gerard, lazily, from his armchair where I imagine he spent his life those days.

With the poise of a gentleman, he went over and extended his hand for her to shake. His voice was soft with a pinprick of enthusiasm, hitting only marginally higher tones. The conjunction: he was shifting his weight from foot to foot, smiling affably, as Mother inclined her head toward him and reached over to feel his cheek that was semi-covered by the evidence of him being at the cusp of manhood. Simultaneously, one could notice old Glenn lifting his hand to feel the sides of his face, devaluing his own traits, the poor man. And then sitting down, on old sofas and armchairs: Mother fawning over Gerard's recounting of Californian experiences. _Oh, but do you have a girlfriend, Gerard?_  No, he does not.  _Oh, that is not in the least surprising._ Really, it isn't?  _Pretty boy as you, betcha gals are melting all over you. What is it? You haven't been to Californian beaches yet? Oh, son, what are you doing, then, over there, at the other end of the country!_

"So, when d'you got to be back, Gerard?" asked my mother.

"Oh, I don't start until late August, but I got to be there on the fifteenth. Diligence matters, first and foremost."

"Well, we still have two months of you, then—there's still time." Mother lifted an eyebrow when she looked my way. "Might as well take him with us to Bergamo, Frankie, boy. With such good looks, Glenn and I can get free drinks everywhere." Gerard laughed it off, like Mother's husband, and Mother, as well. But what they did not realize was that it was indeed true. We hadn't been able to get a mile farther without eyes running over all those good looks of his. 

We had supper and Mother coerced Glenn into carrying an old divan all the way up from the attic to my old bedroom, for me. Initially, the room was only to accommodate Gerard, due to the lack of space. Of course I did not make use of the dusty daybed. It was rendered unscathed and as dusty as the day before. 

My childhood bedroom was a mystery to most house guests as it always was a no-go zone. Always ventilated, because I always thought that fresh air invoked fresh ideas in my mind. It was furnished, still, on the meager budget it had been before, with the fine exception of the bed. The single bed was a French piece my mother had picked up by one of her friends who was leaving the town to go back to France, after the war. It had black, iron frames; a beautiful curvy pattern. But the exquisite thing about my bedroom was that from every wall of the room bore the eyes of my early models, many photographs of my mother—and how she used to despise me for hanging those photographs on the walls. 

But I was there with him, right then. In the summer night, he lay beside me, on the bed of my boyhood. His lithe frame wrapped around me, as he traced an unknown pattern on my chest. I held him loosely. 

I could feel the blood rushing in my veins, as if this were one of those clandestine things you do on a whim. 

"Perhaps we should go to Italy together, you might like Italy," my thinking was divulged when I spoke aloud. 

He considered this only by saying: "Okay." His curt laugh was a mere indication of his weariness. Had I perhaps been tiring him with all the traveling lately? He never got around to telling me when he felt fatigued. "There's only a call I have to make first, and you can count me in," said he after a moment's reflection. He laughed: "Gotta remind Oliver to water the geraniums on our massive garden."

"Domestic," said I and he laughed once more.

"What about you? You got some business to tend to, always, you do. What about the shows?"

"I don't have anything going on right now. Conveniently," I explained. "There will be another time for auspicious moments."

"You will play hooky. From  _your_ heyday."

"Hey—nobody can write about and criticize your oeuvres on art magazines if you ain't producing none." Perhaps there had been a subtle hint of wistfulness in my voice. There always seemed to be when I wasn't working, when I was not snapping pictures of anything. When my camera lay face downwards, neglected, on the backseat of a car.

"It seems to me," he said and lifted himself a bit to place the gentleness of a kiss on the nook of my neck, "you're having a sexcapade, the most illicit and sleazy affair with art. You always have been."

"Your way of describing things is faultless. If I should ever have a broadcaster, recounting my life story, let it be you."

He let out a huff, definitely less than a laugh. Tired, but like a child, he tried to show this was not the case. His lips pressed against my cheek and lingered there; I could already imagine him having closed his eyes, attempting to rebuff sleep helplessly, as his body gave him away. He moved his hand sluggishly, a tired attempt of caressing the back of my ear. _"Prettyboy,"_  in a hushed tone I said, then cocked my head to the side to look at him, his eyes shut as he murmured a sleepy response and inched closer to me.  _"Prettyboy, prettyboy, prettyboy,"_ I whispered again in his ear. In the blackness, in the quietness of the room.

"Prettyboy, prettyboy...Prettyboy," he echoed back, with a softness in his voice, unheard before. From where he rested, he kissed my neck again and he stayed there, with his lips ghosting over my skin, putting a seal on me. He slept so soundly.


	17. Chapter 17

As with the click of the tongue, the dialing-in of the numbers was done. A telephone somewhere in the country was ringing, first came the indication of there being a plausible response. Then the tap of the finger on the rose-wooden bench underneath the telephone followed. Pause. Tap on the wood. Pause, then, another tap. The recipient most probably picked up the phone, because the pretty boy afar plastered a smile on his face and began to talk. Was he talking quietly, so as to not be heard by the old lady beside him who awaited her telephone call? Was he talking in a hushed tone, at all? One could not tell from my distance, as I stood, waiting with his bag dangling from my arm, at the hectic and lively airport. Smoke from smokers lurking from every corner; the voices of the people waiting anxiously for the person to arrive; the crying children clamoring to their mothers because they couldn't stand the heat any longer. Airports are an inveterate mess. Yet there stood Gerard, in his own world, talking to someone over the phone hastily, most probably informing the person of his suddenly-decided departure. He moved his hand up to reach the back of his head, and stay there, perhaps for warmness. He threw then a furtive glance around and, thus, I became certain he was whispering. An ephemeral sentence fleeted from his mouth, due to the time allotted. He presumably got a quick response and was gratified, because he hung up the phone with an immediacy. And I thought perhaps he was thinking of me.

He approached, all innocent-looking, perhaps really believing that I hadn't been watching him, and he nodded his head that he was ready to go. We went to look for my mother and Glenn. 

I thought about calling Robert, but I dismissed the thought. He had my address in Bergamo. Other than that, he hadn't bothered making a fuss out of the fact that I wasn't pandering to every New York art magazine lately, as they had been getting on my nerves. Frank Iero this, Frank Iero that, about photography, making a maxim out of my every freely expressed thought. You must be certainly thinking of me as greedy. Well. Perhaps I am, I am unarmed of things to say to defy that statement.

Anyhow, I was indifferent during the flight. Most people are either overwhelmed or enthusiastic when it comes to flying, but I am rather offhand about flights. It doesn't bug me, when the woman behind me smokes or talks to her friend loudly. I do not complain to the stewardess. I don't mind when we enter some turbulence and the plane shudders frightfully for some time. No, I do not wish to crash, but if we were to crash, I would predominantly be the calmest person on the plane. I learned that Gerard supported my attitude as well, though it was only his third time flying, he told me.

We arrived at the Milan Malpensa sometime in the noon. A taxi took us through Lombardy and to where we always used to stop in Bergamo, and we walked to the old Iero residence, which Gerard commentated on, being of the opinion that it resembled a temple, on account of the Doric order that prevailed on the architecture of the house, visible from the facade, visible from miles off. The architecture of the manor was very intricate. The whole point of the manor from the very beginning was to give prominence to the rising sun. When the sun was rising, the building looked best. At night, I used to say as a kid, it looked like it was sleeping soundly. It was all the doing of some older Iero I never had the pleasure of meeting.

A few laughs sounded off as my mother and Gerard conversed while we were following the cobbled path. 

Gerard and I settled on the second floor, in the third bedroom which used to be for my twin cousins. Two single beds were placed near each other. Gerard stared at them for a moment in thought and sort of gave me a smile on a whim. We had a rich supper downstairs with Mother, Glenn, Mother's Friends and Co. and made plans to go out downtown. 

After I was done getting dressed—meaning, throwing on a hat, as I usually do—I headed downstairs to the sitting room. That's when I heard music. Soft piano music; I could envision the fingers pressing down the white keys, reaching out for sharps and flats wedged in between. But somehow I thought I could never imagine Gerard producing that music. And walking in, I did see Gerard on the Bechstein grand piano, thinking how little I knew about him, even after nearly two years of knowing, aching and yearning after him. 

He was playing with such care, but so offhandedly. As if he knew every note by heart. He seemed to play up yet not give any effort into his playing at all. Then the melody intensified, he straightened up and moved his fingers across the keyboard faster. I had never learned to play the piano. 

The thing was only decoration since one of my cousins last visited. It sat there, collecting dust, lusterless; but he gave life to it once again. He didn't interrupt his playing even after he had noticed me; with fastidiousness, he went on and I was right beside him, fathoming the look on his face. 

The melody fluctuated. He emphasized on the continuous arpeggios. And then he stopped. 

I placed a hand on his shoulder.

"It's Liszt," said he, smiling to himself. " _Un sospiro_."

"I didn't know you could play," I admitted, surprise ostentatious by my expression. He looked at me interestingly and lifted an eyebrow. 

"You better start learning more about me then. I've been playing since I was seven." He halfheartedly began to play something else; an uplifting jazz tune. "Spent half my evenings after school with an old clod. He was obsessed, a perfectionist. Don't know where my mother found him. Probably dug him out of his grave."

"Summertime," I pointed out the aria, after some time. "Gershwin."

He grinned at me, amused as he rocked back and forth to the rhythm. "It's an adaptation."

"By whom?"

"That you can find out yourself," he rejoined with a whimsical smirk and returned to his playing. My hand reached the back of his head and I stroked his thoroughly combed hair. He scooted to the left so I could take a seat beside him; I observed closely the blossoming smile, the rising of the eyebrow now and then. He played so evocatively. The voice of Ella Fitzgerald arose from nowhere in my mind, singing:

 _'One of these mornings,_  
You're going to rise up singing,  
Then you'll spread your wings,  
And you'll take to the sky.'

Just when I was going to plant a kiss on his neck, haphazardly, when I felt like doing so and he had taken notice of it, my mother's voice echoed from down the hallway. She came prancing in in high spirits and, alarmed, we both straightened up, mechanistic smiles concealed our unpardonable flightiness.

"Gerard, boy," Mother exclaimed, grinning widely, "you're one of charming nature, my boy. I didn't know you could play the  _piano_. What a wonder you are. I didn't know you could play so well."

Neither did I.

"Frankie boy wouldn't sit his ass down to learn the cello when I urged him to," she announced. I left my seat. 

Well, the cello was bigger than me and that festered me, frankly.

"Music has never been my realm of expertise," was my feeble response.

"Music is made only by some very specifically intricate pieces of mechanism, and for their mothers, to preen. I envy that. How proud your mother must be, Gerard." Her tone sounded off generated, right off a poorly-written script. Yet Gerard was smiling at her in his usual affable way as my mother announced that. "Shall we?" she prompted.

After my wedding, I did not find the chance to join my mother and Glenn to Bergamo again. As a kid, I found it rather infuriating when Mother and her husband would drag me along to all these cafes, where I was only allowed to drink one glass of the same orange juice, play around that one block exclusively, chase the cross-eyed pigeons until the clocks had stricken ten and we would make for the car, to the house. It is rather a pity I never had the mind to appreciate the mystic valleys, the rare cafes, the pattern on the gravel path. But Gerard did not help, by being there, to let me acknowledge those little things even then. They all seemed quite trivial, of no importance, when he was opposite me, ordering a glass of orange juice in his upside-down Italian, at the shabby cafe, and smiling charmingly at the young waiter, with eyes big.

I set my teeth only in intrigue. I leaned in to filter out all the noise and only hear the sound of his voice, saying, "Il succo  _de_   _n_ arancia, p _o_ r favore," as the boy in apron looked down at his notepad, jotted something down that took him more time than one thought it should. I was reluctant to believe he was writing down just Gerard's order. The importance of the smiles they exchanged defied me; I was not jealous, by the literal definition; perhaps a tad bit more interested in seeing how things would have processed if given the chance to. And Gerard's out-of-this-world Spanish-Italian brought a smile to my face. 

After we had finished our coffees and Gerard his glass of juice at that cafe at the piazza, we abandoned Glenn and Mother on my call to go off scot-free, since they were planning on doing their usual walks and eating at a restaurant and all the things that used to bore an eight-year-old. By then I had called Gerard my 'mentee' twice during our time at the cafe and I did enjoy chaffing like that. 

"Well, would you look at that," said Gerard as we walked on the still cooling pavement, the sun skirting the horizon. He held out a piece of paper with something scribbled on and it flattered in a gale. My eyes skimmed over the written compliment which hinted at his 'nice use of tongue' or however one might translate it. "Perhaps I should come and move in here, if it's  _that_  easy, wouldn't you say?" he joked.

"Indeed, my disciple," I had started to play around with him, "and with your Spanish-speaking-tongue, you could probably pass off as a native. I am sorry, did I say Spanish? I meant Italian." He shook with laughter and demanded to know how I came to know he spoke Spanish. " _De_   _n_ arancia?  _Por_ favore?" said I.

He lifted his shoulders with half effort, laughing. "Tell you what, I bet I could lodge here without knowing a single word in Italian."

"Really?"

After a moment's respite, he came up with an answer. "I mean, I got all I need here!" He came to a halt, flailed his arms, pointed around him to buildings and restaurants and whatnot. "Flitty waiters and people wearing normal shirts! You ain't getting that in California, I'll say. I can live here and open a cafe, act as if I'm The Dumb American, and freelance my way through life." He squared his jaw for a moment before going on, with lapidary words that stick with me to this day: "And I can be as overtly homosexual as I want here, because it seems to me like nobody ever minds business that ain't theirs in this place."

I found his tone to be sarcastic at first, but nevertheless, it was certainly veering towards honesty. I took a one-sided approach by rejoining: "Yes. You could indeed live here." And then: "Though you'll most likely get extradited before you can say the word 'homosexual' for causing The New Endemic. The one that involves all men and womenfawningover you."

His chuckle was one of appreciation. He ostensibly accepted and devoured the compliment with pleasure. And that is how it should always be with him. Showering him with compliments. By everybody. Be that, my mother, Glenn, waiters, or me.

The next day, around four o'clock, I took him with the car to the nearest lake when he said, "It's kind of scorching here, in the metaphorical _and_ literal way," and we traveled around. That one part of the lake was full, much like every noon to afternoon. 

The sun had set when we had just gotten out of a bar in the vicinity, had had a couple of drinks, and tipsiness rocked as back and forth, filled us with zeal. It was then I felt as if I was a teenager again, with no hesitation in falling in love. We were somehow, that very night, drawn together like never before. And we went into town at a time unspeakable, wandered aimlessly through valleys and spied like children behind cathedrals, pointed like toddlers to statues and told each other, _'Next time we look its way, its eyes are going to follow us,'_ and with the megalomania of such toddlers, we trod on the grass that grew between the stones on the cobbled ground. We jostled, we fell, we sparred and wrestled, we hooted with laughter. We must have kissed at some point without knowing what we were doing, or perhaps knowing exactly what we were doing. I cannot recall the kisses vividly, but they certainly happened. It was all so naturally wrought out of me and him. 

" _Where_  did we leave the car?" I wondered for half an hour and worried about getting home halfheartedly if at all.

Gerard had taken my hand and was leading me around, capering lively, filled with a euphoria I'd never gazed at a person and thought about before. His hair fell into his face as he did a playful skipping movement and he was alone in his world, letting go of my hand, and singing to himself. I was glad to be his spectator. What a beautiful world he had. His attitude was so duly with the weeping willows in the back, swaying to and fro on demand of the dominant gust of wind. He stopped at some point and lifted a finger, to show behind me. "That way is the car, I remember it  _very well,_ " said he, and before I had time to make for the car, he said, pointing drunkenly to the glimpse of glistering water, "but I want to go to the lake."

The vestige of our tipsiness, after roughly twenty minutes of walking, was pure carefreeness that played around faux drunkenness. Scampering under the branches of the trees, we found a spot near the lake, quite isolated, far from the lively bars and cafes alongside it. At this time, the lake was indistinguishable from the velvet-black, the dark of the sky. 

"What're you doing?" he inquired as if he didn't know. 

"Get a move on or the water'll get colder." 

Last time I had gone night swimming, in college, one of my friends got bit by something that was glistening in the waters of Lake Ashmere, and he still has that bite mark to this day. Somehow, I was not hesitant to plunge in this time. Gerard followed my lead and dropped his clothes on a tree stump. The water was freezing, much to our surprise, or it may have been that our bodies conducted so much warmth from running around. Our exclamations and outcries sounded off and faded as a light breeze blew and shook the leaves of the willows and river birches. 

He swam underwater, went astray, and then came back to me, caught me underneath and tried to wrestle me in the shallow water. I held his body close to mine. 

At the shore, the lakeside, we rested there beside one another. My presence to me seemed trifle in comparison to what lied underneath, skin and bones. His chest against my chest, skin to skin, mouth to mouth, and the waves neared the shore, heaped themselves, broke and swept a white veil of water across the sand, and it pains me to remember every single happy moment of it. We made love there. His fingernails dug into my skin and he shut his eyes. The waves broke and swept their waters swiftly over our bodies. 

Then we made our way to the car without saying much, our arms grazing each other's, our hands tightly pressed together, fingers tangled. His wet hair let drops of water fall on my shoulder. 

The next moment, a hearty laugh sounded off from afar, but it shook me enough to disentangle my fingers from his and draw back until I had honed in and ensured that the voice was coming from far, far away. I recall his eyes staring into mine, perhaps inquisitively though he knew why I had done what I'd done and kept my distance. His brows furrowed for only a second. Then he cocked his head and looked the other way, pretending to understand. We exchanged a wordless glance before slumping into the car. 

That moment has haunted me for quite some time.

We didn't talk any even after we had gotten home. Each of us ensconced in his own separate bed, we turned the lights off and went to sleep. But sometime during the little rest of the night, I made out a whisper. 

"Frank?" he said. "Are you awake?"

"Quite." Silence. He sighed. I said as if to justify, "The door doesn't lock."

"So what. So fucking  _what_." He sighed again, but in a different, sort of exasperated, manner. He was mad at me. "If you don't get over here, I'm going downstairs."

So I left my bed and slept next to him that night. So it happened the next night, and the night after that. But not on the fourth night. That night, I had refused internally myself to hold his hand after we'd gone for another night swim. And the next day, in particular, had been pretty odd.

My mother had invited us, or rather forced me, to come to this outdoor party that her lawyer friend was organizing. It was not the best day to choose for this kind of thing. Gerard and I had bickered about something earlier that evening, I cannot seem to remember what it was all about. I said he was childish; I do recall that. I recall regretting raising my voice at him afterward. It was a slightly absurd experience, the party, as there we were, smoking our cigarettes languidly, Gerard and I. We hadn't talked for a while. Suddenly, this smooth music started to play and invited people to the nonexistent dance floor. Gerard had a look around, then turned to me.

"Don't suppose you want to dance or anything," he told me and I looked away, for I knew he was on the brink of beginning to act sulky. He stubbed out his cigarette. "Thought so," he announced, "guess I'll go find your mom then."

"How the tables have turned," I had quipped and he frowned at me, ostensibly keeping himself back from glowering venomously.

Mother was indeed overly happy and garrulous over the fact that Gerard had asked her to dance, and they moved in continuous flowing movements across the aforementioned nonexistent dance floor. Glenn, being his ungainly and not so talkative self, came my way and perched himself opposite me. 

"He's a good young fella, that Gerard," said he. "Hardly resembles his mother, though, if my memory serves me rightly."

"He does look nothing like Lana, indeed," rejoined I, thinking out loud, more or less.

"Lana was her name, was it? Oh!" Glenn huffed. "Why, I thought of a Betty. Why, I thought her name was Betty, for sure! Oh, no, damn me."

"That's a portent, the thing with your memory," I diverged, "perhaps you should have that checked out."

"Goddamn Betty! I don't even know a  _Betty_  myself. Or was it Ettie? Think I know one Ettie gal."

As the song came to an unsatisfying end, Mother beckoned Gerard to come with her and grabbed some blond girl's hand, leading her closer. She motioned to them, looking like she was fit to making acquaintances for people other than herself. She used to do that with me, back in the day. Like a service.  _'This is Gerard,'_  I could imagine her saying as I saw her lips moving, _'Gerard, this is the lovely...'_

Gerard hardly threw a glance over to me before he extended his hand for the girl to take and they danced to the next song, some light foxtrot. His hand was placed carefully on the girl's waist; his smile, luminous and exuberant. She had to be charmed; she did look enchanted. They swayed, following the same steps, again and again, and I found myself wishing I were in New York in my apartment.

The Defendant, my mother, walked up to me leisurely. "Look at 'em havin' a good time, Frankie, boy. I just introduced him to lovely Rita, the daughter of Mary-Jane. Oh, how wonderful it must be, to be young."

The night slipped away like Glenn's glass from his shaky hand. Gerard and I went to the lake anyhow. 

"Haven't seen you taking any pictures lately. What's come over you?" he had asked me as we drove back to the manor. _You_ , I wanted to say. It was all his fault, after all.

"You wouldn't understand if I tried to explain to you."

He merely looked out of the window with a reluctant frown. Almost a scowl directed to me.

I never visited Bergamo again, after that summer—I still haven't. But that house no longer bashes childhood memories into my face; images of my cousins or Glenn going fishing with me no longer arise to shock my subconscious. My subconscious has since found a new way to put me at ill ease, to scare me off, since those two weeks were the last I spent in that Iero manor, that evocative town square; it was the last time I swam in that Italian lake. Italy never saw my face again. 

But somehow, in my mind, we're still there, drinking and messing around like an actual couple, which sounds preposterous enough. At the very least, in Italy, we were not basic criminals, but that was hardly part of our concerns, as we never let it show. But if I close my eyes, at times, I can still go back and feel the waves washing over me, falling with a thud, the moon striking straight upon my back; I can still feel his hand on mine, and moreover, more than ever before, I can imagine him and now that—


	18. Chapter 18

And. 

Where I left off, I cannot bring myself to continue. There seems to be a hitch with this, expressing my opinion and recounting what happened in Italy. See, the trouble with writing your memoirs is that you are forced to relive the most beautiful moments of your life, but not in a way that you can relish your memories. You are not the center of the attention anymore; you realize time has gone by and you hanker back to a time you cannot physically relive anymore, not even spiritually. And you are forced in this realm of make-believe, the knave you are, you are convinced that reminiscing will be the same as reliving.

It only makes you envious of the person you used to be.

So much for Oscar Wilde saying that 'to become a spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life.' I beg to differ.

Early August had reached us and we had taken a valiant plunge into the sea. Early August. Back in the US: the sun scraping. We had left Massachusetts once again and were roughly twenty minutes away from New York City. 

He said he would meet a friend there. It suited me fine because I was thinking about getting back to The Studio, get some work done. 

In the backseat of the car, I had his scrapbook, completed. I couldn't let him know that yet, however. It was the only work of art I had been proud of, ever. A photograph of him on the grand piano marked the end of it and I knew I had to start a new one.

Gerard was driving so wordlessly; he had turned the radio off previously, which only made me doubt he was in excellent spirits. But I completely comprehended that, in a way. I felt the same.

"I'd love to have you in The Studio sometime," I announced, point-blank, hoping he'd ease up a bit, but his grip was still tight around the steering wheel. 

"Mhm."

My sigh came out inadvertently, made it seem as though I was vexed. I was ready to break the misunderstood silence when he said:

"You know, it doesn't have to be like this."

I was taken aback by his statement. I think I had heard it some time in Italy as well but paid no mind to it. He might have said that.

"Doesn't have to be like . . . What?"

"You know exactly what I mean. You know exactly what I am driving at."

I did. But instead, I decided to play stupid.

"I don't have an idea, Gerard. Give me an inkling. What  _are_  you driving at?"

"'Kay, look," he began with a sigh, "it doesn't have to be like this anymore, Frank. I mean, if it's in our hands, which it  _is,_ then why not? You know? I mean, did you have a good time this summer?"

What could I say? I couldn't lie. I can't think of one person who would lie in that situation.

"I sure did. For sure."

"Then," he began as his complexion changed, his eyebrows drew together, "why should we wait for so long again? Wait until next summer, I know that's what you're thinkin' 'bout right now. But it ain't right. It doesn't _feel_  right. Not to me."

Right then I wasn't thinking about waiting another year. I knew that was imminent. Patience was key with the botch I had made out of things. And I knew what he had in his mind but, no, it could not, not ever, make headway. Even though for a moment, I did think for a split second that his envision could work. And then it backfired, lickety-split, when I realized that we were living two different lives, the two of use. That we could plan and  _work_ like that. Who would think that?

How far could we get with this in 1963, two men, with an age difference of many years?

"You're not speaking," he pointed out the obvious when several minutes of silence had passed.

"Of course I'm not." My voice breaking was a telltale sign of my dejection. I could not let it show. Thus I covered it up with anger. "What you're suggesting is just stupid."

I wanted it back as soon as I had blurted it out.

"What?"

"It could never go our way. Trust me about that. One thing I've learned that has come with age. Right now you might not see it, but I am being logical and facing the truth and I think—"

He snapped almost instantaneously—probably something that had been bandied around in his mind for long— "Hell, I know the goddamn truth better than you do, it seems to me!"

"Hey. Lower your voice."

"No, I  _won't_ lower my voice, for heaven's sake. And age! Oh, God. I knew you would bring it up at some point. It's one of your two justifications. One is us being men, which is a feeble argument, lemme tell you, and the other's about age!"

His fingers were white as they clutched at the wheel.

One thing I have to admit, he knew me better than he thought he did. He read me like an open book sometimes.

But would I let him know that? No.

"Because it's  _true._ Your make-believe wouldn't work because it is make-believe. Those are the main reasons. Whether you like it or not. I'm much older than you, you and I are both men, and you've made up some fantasy in your head." I insisted. I didn't know at that point why we were yelling at each other, because we both wanted the same thing. We wanted us but he just didn't comprehend that it wasn't that easy.

"You didn't seem to mind when it was my mother, she was years older than you, too," he spat venomously and, by that point, I had become livid.

"Well, hell. That did not work out either! Lesson for you."

He rolled his eyes and clicked his tongue. "Like it had anything to do with me." He paused and took a turn left. We were some minutes away from the city now. "You tick that one argument off about age, straight away, because I can give you so many goddamn examples of relationships that were or are going on  _strong_. Because two people wanting each other is stronger than the bonds of age."

I scoffed. "What do you know about relationships? Huh?" I shook my head vehemently in my rage. I thought to myself, he was just— "You're just a kid. For all I know, you might be confused."

And there he was again. Apoplectic with rage. 

"I am  _not._  Not a fucking  _kid._  I'm twenty and it's time you get it in your head that you can't treat me like a fucking teen." I didn't have a barb to this, nothing to bite back. Next thing I knew he was exposing me like nobody ever had done before: "You can't because, for all I know, you might be more irresponsible than I've ever been in my entire life. You don't even own up to the fact that you like  _men_ like that. You keep it stowed away and think it is just meant to be concealed. While I am over here trynna get it into people's heads that it is perfectly  _normal_ , and I have the friggin' devil's advocate right next to me, defying me. I have you, for fuck's sake, going against my principles. Yet you spewed 'I love you's like it was all so easy the past weeks. And now you say I might just be a confused kid.

"Do you even know what shit I had to go through? Let's take one example. Take my aunt's house—do you know who I was living with? You don't know what I went through. And despite that, I still stuck to my guns. That bastard uncle I have is the most disgusting, mortifying being I've ever encountered, and I ain't lying when I say I would rather rot in my mother's house than relive any of the moments I spent in that house with him. In that cabin of my grandfather's. When I was really a  _kid._

"And even though I found out early on that I was attracted to men, I did not, for the sake of me, try to deny it! You were there when my mother tried to call me out on it. I never denied it, never uttered a lie to conceal it in my life. And I live in San Francisco because I  _see_ that there are people just like me. And I see that there is a part that needs to change in the world and that part includes you. I come face to face with that part, the people who try to single us out. The people who don't tolerate it like there is something to tolerate. The people that conceal it and thus, they are putting people like themselves at risk. People like me." He paused there and I kept staring at him with eyes wide. "I am not fucking confused. I am fucking  _serious_."

When his words stopped filling the air, I felt so vulnerable. Each syllable had been cutting my superficial seams and only when he was done did I realize I was coming apart. The pictures he made vivid in my mind when I did not want them to be so vivid. And he kept driving on while each moment passing marked my shame and my need to apologize was pestering me. I could not quench it, could not wreak those words out of me.

_I am so fucking sorry. I have been since day one._

I am sorry for the things I did.

The only thing I had been able to say, after so much time of mustering up the courage was brief and not sufficient.

"I am proud of you. And you're right. You're not a kid."

"So you see," said he, "that one of your arguments does not hold."

Determined, I clarified, "Both of them don't hold. You're right."

I was beginning to recognize the street we were in. We were on the East Side. I told him where to drop me off.

"Well, that leaves you with no arguments, but—" he paused— "Doesn't matter anymore, now, does it?"

_Yes, it does. It always does._

"I suppose not."

He pulled off right opposite The Studio and I retrieved my suitcase from the trunk. The moment I took the leather book into my hands, the book that held together memories, I knew it was not the time to give it to him yet. I didn't want him to associate it with these toxic memories we had just created. I sooner die than know I had left him with just bad memories.

I went up to him as he was rolling the window down.

"You wanna come up for a drink or something?" I offered.

He scratched the back of his neck nervously. "I got a friend who's in town. I've kinda been keeping him waiting for three hours now . . ." Pause. He looked around and squinted. "So," said he.

"So," said I.

His hazel eyes were glistening to an extent where it was hardly obvious, but I did notice immediately. I felt the urge to reach out and cup his face and that I did.

He very nearly ignored me and looked straight ahead, putting his sunglasses on to hide his eyes. I knew that was what he was trying to do. And yet he had been talking about now concealing so many things. Why was he trying to hide the fact that he was close to tears from me?

"It's until next summer, I s'pose," he shrugged his shoulders and I retracted my hand from his face, "except if luck treats us any better this time. Might see you before Easter even."

"Might be sooner than that. For all we know, I might see you tomorrow." I wondered what that'd be like but my doubts offset my hopes. "You got my address. And my number."

He let out a sigh I could not interpret and started the car. I backed away.

"Take a coupla more pictures, will ya? They enjoy it. Your art."

I observed as the car took off and watched it vanish from sight. It took a turn left. I might as well have been sitting there, gazing, for half an hour. For all I know, it might have been days.

I felt like I had a long way before me. Before seeing him again.

I went into The Studio. A letter from Jack Cooper awaited me on the threshold and that is when I realized I had missed him lots. I grabbed a Scotch I'd found lying around and read the letter, something about getting a divorce, his mother dying. I thought I had to see him soon and maybe it would all start making sense again. At least he was my age. Perhaps it would make so much more sense.

In less than four hours the bottle of Scotch was empty and I had fallen onto the bed, into a deep sleep.

I did not see Gerard the next day.

Although, something very weird indeed happened when I woke up and it was evening. The telephone rang and the voice that spoke to me I was ultimately surprised to hear.

_"'Ello? Is this Frank?"_

"Yeah. Who's this?"

_"Hey. Hey, man! I heard you're out and around these days. I s'pose, I asked Robert where you shacked up these days and he gave me your number—I didn't have it, so—I thought, y' know. Robert said he had no idea where you were, so . . . I thought: why not give Frankie a call since he's back from Italy, you know?_   _Never thought you'd go back there, man! Last time I thought you said you hated—"_

"Ray Toro?"

_"Yeah, tha's me, buddy."_  When I didn't speak, neither did he, and a silence lapsed.  _"So, you wanna meet up or somethin'? Grab a drink—coffee?"_

***

"I've been sorta busy with the kid and all. Father's duty has changed me, man. I hardly go out for my own sake, y' know? Gotta take the kid to kindergarten every morning before work, then pick him up and drop him off to his Granny's, 'cause I work some evenings, and some I don't. Y' know how it goes, since Christa left to nurse her father back home. We've never been so responsible."

"Christa? Oh, Christa!" I hardly remembered her face. She'd been Ray's first love, I've been to their wedding, best man, and I could barely recall what she looked like. "That still goin' strong, huh?"

Ray was five years her junior, I realized, and fuck, all of yesterday came back to me. Age difference. I've practically solicited a minor in my life. Sort of. If it had been taken out of context, I'm sure it'd count as solicitation. 

At least Ray was a minor when Christa and he had gotten it on.

"I s'pose," said Ray but there was something his tone lacked and that was confidence. Zero.

I hoped they weren't heading to the gutter, too.

"It's the kid, isn't it? It's too much for both of you to handle, or what?" Before graduation, I had never thought of Ray as a father. He was one of those guys you knew would start a band and maybe get married. But there are those certain types of guys, you know they're liable to remain childless all their life, because that's a step too far for them. I was surprised when—around the time I met Lana, I believe it was—Ray announced he had a child. His son was almost a year old and he had hidden it from us. We were out with some college friends and I recall they all gaped at him. So did Robert. So did I.

"Nah, the kid's great. He gives me life," he said, to my surprise. "Hey, you remember that kid, Michael Way? Sorry to remind you of all the Way business, by the by—Robert said that ended badly. But you introduced the kid to me and, man, am I thankful to you!"

I could just have gulped thinking about the Way business—if that was what we were calling it now—in general. I had completely drawn Michael Way out of the picture since, with a snap of Lana's finger, he had vanished. 

"Yeah? You still see the kid? No wonder. He admired you."

"A-huh. We go on trips to the Botanic Garden once a month. Sometimes he and his girlfriend babysit the kid. Mikey's a gem—both hippies, of course, he and Alice. Alice is his girlfriend." He paused and scratched the back of his neck, a half-genuine smile playing on his lips. "Oh, to watch young love bloom, huh?"

I didn't know how to get my own mind out of the gutter already. The words 'young' and 'love' and 'bloom'; a finger on the trigger as I have a few cards left to play, few gimmicks to pull; I am out of my head and I realized I needed to get out of this stalemate situation fast. 

Ray ignored my silence. "So, what you doin' these days, man? What got you to go back to Italy with your mother and Glenn? I thought you said you said you hated that place."

"Hate's a strong word," I said and plus, 'hate' was not to be associated with Bergamo again. I may have fucked my life up during the time I spent there, and messed someone else up in the long run, but 'hating' that place; I still am far from it. "You know, going back to Italy made me change my mind a bit, but I got back and I'm planning to shack up here for a while. Get some work done, y' know?"

Maybe please Robert who had been garrulous over the fact that I had nothing new and that that was to be the turning point of my career. Thing is, I had plenty of ideas. They just got adapted in the process.

"Well, it'll do you good. I always remember you used to be happier when you were going over your photographs, drying them, painting over them—good college days. Remember those, Frankie?"

"We're not fifty yet, Ray," I said, but all I could think was that we weren't eighteen, either. "And anyway, something leads me to assume you're heading down a road, buddy."

Ray scoffed. "A bad one. I just can't get over some things."

Tell me about it.

"Let's thrash it out, then. What's it about?"

His eyes darted around, the agitation was showing from telltale signs that escaped him. His hand scratching the back of his neck. His fingers tapping on the table. The quirking of his eyebrow.

I was getting impatient. Whatever had found the time to occur since the last time I had seen him, it could not be worse than what I had gone through, the things I had done. Surely he hadn't been harboring the horrendous thoughts I'd been harboring, he hadn't gone down the path I'd gone, he didn't know of a pretty boy who was bound to break his soul in two pieces. Surely, I was the only one to know this hell on earth. Nobody could be worse than me. So I thought.

"I cheated on her," Ray suddenly let the words escape his mouth. All the telltale signs of apprehension ceased to exist, ceased to come out in that form. He looked me right in the eyes and I realized I was revolted yet afraid at the same time. "I cheated on her, Frankie. That's it. That's all, I s'pose. I am a fucking cheater."

Good thing the coffee shop we'd picked was empty.

Anger cascaded down in his eyes and a wicked smirk formed on his lips.

When I didn't speak, he said, "So much for having dreams. A child. A wedding ring around my finger."

"With whom?" I wanted to know. 

I, damndest of all; it was the only thing I wanted to know. Perhaps I could find justice in his words, a new way to justify myself. What if he'd committed sins far worse than mine?

But this was really not the case, I realized. Because 'there ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue.'

It's all 'part of the same thing.'

"Goddamn waitress," he cussed, "it was a one-shot thing, didn't even last. She smiled at me and we got this thing going for three days and now she doesn't even matter, all that does is that I cheated on my wife, for God's  _sake_."

He had given me a tip-off to appease me, without even knowing what was happening, he was carving a path for me to get it all out of my chest. 

And so I said, more truthfully than I ever have, "Lana and I finished it because I cheated on her, too." I doubted it would console him any; it was a bad thing. 

His face cleared of distortion. 

"Oh," he said. "Robert mentioned it getting messy by the end—I just thought she was just another Betty. I mean—man.  _You_  cheating? I thought you'd never—I mean, Ettie and then, Betty. Why would you—You know you despised that—"

And that was it. I knew exactly what gimmick to pull. Now that he couldn't arrange his words or thoughts. 

"You wanna hear the worst part of it? It doesn't end there," I made known, my face already devoid of color. 

I wasn't vicious; I solely wished to get it out of my chest, coming back to all the things Gerard had said to me.

_'And I see that there is a part that needs to change in the world and that part includes you.'_  Those are, verbatim, the words that had left his mouth the day before.

Ray's expression was one of a scared man. He didn't know what storm I was bringing along. 

"Frank," he sighed shakily as though he couldn't take his idiocy and mine all at once, "don't tell me you—"

"I cheated on her with men."

That was the second time I allowed those words to rise from my tongue and I expelled them. There, it was meant to console him, but I thought by the looks of it, I had ended up doing him more bad than good.

His face went pallid. He tried scoffing once, scoffing twice, looking around for somebody sane in the street, but the street was empty. 

I don't recall how long that silence was, the one that followed. It fell on us like a pall; we were lifeless for one moment, basking in our follies. And we were very much alive for the other moment; regret shearing through us like a dagger. 

That is how Ray, my friend since college, came to know. 

To be candid, had it not been for what Gerard had told me the day before, I might have never even told a soul about it. But I resolved not to think about that because I had already told Ray.

It felt like eons had passed until Ray spoke again. He said, eyes bugged out but not looking at me, "That was not what I had in mind when you said 'worse.'  _Damn it_. It didn't even cross my mind. Because  _you_ —" he took a breath and it got hitched on his throat— " _you_  are  _Frank_. For fuck's sake, you are Frank from college—you are the only person who wanted to get married. You got married to—Frank, you got married to a woman. Wom _en_ , even."

I only shrugged my shoulders, half-heartedly. 

"You . . ." he scrupled intensely and it was showing by then. "Are you . . . Y' know. That way?"

I moved my hand up to touch my neck. My chin. I hadn't been nabbed; I had ratted my own self out. But having someone being censorious over it made me feel vulnerable.

I shrugged again. 

"I might be."

"Oh," Ray simply said. I knew he was getting more and more anxious as the moments of silence passed. We shoot the breeze some more, just for the hell of it, but I could see I was the only one trying. But I knew I couldn't expect more from him; I was privy to the man I'd been and the man I'd become. To him, it was a major change. For me? I was still the Frank Iero I always was. I couldn't remember a moment during which I'd not been the Frank Iero I am. I may have had cheated on my wife, I may have had something for men, but I was not two-faced.

Well, define two-faced . . .

Ray ended up telling me that he had 'this thing to do' and then covered it up with some excuse about his kid. "I'll call you," he promised before leaving. "I'm not. . . Going to let you disappear like you did last time, man. I'll call you regularly. Promise."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To anybody who is wondering: I am not abandoning this story. I refuse to put it on hold. I have, however, figured it out and finished writing it. Thing is, I don't have a beta reader and I need to edit and proofread a hundred times, and I do it all by myself, and it does get tiring, so. Hmphhhhh. . . My mind just goes blank thinking about it.
> 
> Anyhow. Terribly sorry for taking so long. Not promising that I'm not going to take this long ever again 'cause, you know. . . it me, britney bitch.
> 
> Check out my tumblr (https://chicagoish.tumblr.com/) or wattpad (user: chicagoish) for any updates. Don't hesitate to ask me stuff about the story or send me feedback. I *love* getting feedback.
> 
> Thanks for reading, means a lot xx


	19. Chapter 19

_San Francisco, CA_

_June 1st, 1965_

_Frank,_

_I can only hope this letter finds you well. You have been out of touch for a while now, but then so have I._ _I was in Tenderloin recently, downtown San Fran., and a protester (I don't actually know what he was protesting for) had a bunch of pictures of communist figures lined up across the side of the street. He had your photograph of Che Guevara, too, and I sort of laughed aloud at that. Your signature was at the bottom left._ _Funny, you did that. What are you doing, if you are doing anything at all, vis a vis your photography these days?_

_So, it just happened that the last time you wrote was on my birthday, but I happened to get the letter a few weeks too late. See, I was on the run since New Year's, I barely had the time for school. I'm thinking of packing in, actually. What good will an English Lit degree do me? I spent New Year's with some friends who go to UC Berkeley, then I went to see Mikey in D.C. and he told me Raymond had visited you recently, that you were in Massachusetts for some reason. I thought you meant it when you said you'd be living in New York from here on out. I reckon something has given you a good reason to leave._

_Then, for my birthday, I was at Ma's. You've probably haven't gotten word yet, so here's the exposé: Ma's got a new beau. Married. I didn't know anything about it either. Some Wallace guy, pretty well off. I was starting to cause a scene when I learned for the first time that they had sold off the house on Squirrel Hill without running it by me first, so he paid me to disappear. Now, f_ _unny thing, love. I mean, wouldn't you pay your wife's son to disappear, if you knew it'd make her happy? Don't we do everything for love? And anyway, what do I care? I got my share._

_Since April I've been back here in San Fran. I moved to a new neighborhood some days ago, I've just gotten settled. It's pretty crowded here, in Eureka Valley. So much better than the school's campus. I have a job in the vicinity and I work at the Randall Museum, for kids. It's fun and all, better than working at the coffee shop where Oliver is working and is constantly getting hit on by girls. I go there after work and split my sides laughing at how inept he is at finding good excuses. So, it goes like this: say the girl scribbles her number on a napkin and Oliver hands it back, saying, "My Ma won't let me call girls yet." So, the girl will usually say, "That's fine. I can call you, pea." And Oliver, out of ideas, will just stutter out excuses until the girl is so worn out, she's repelled by him. I was horsing around once and told Oliver that cuffing your jeans was slowly becoming the new fad for homosexuals and that girls would see that and get the hint, first thing, so I got him to cut all of his bell bottoms and roll them up, like I do to my jeans. I'm having such a good laugh over here, you see._

_So, that's all that's happened to me the past months. 1965 doesn't seem that bad, though it started off preposterously. If you heard the news, that is. Have you heard anything? New Year's at Barkley was groovy, and that's one way to put it._

_I write to tell you that, even if you don't want to meet up this summer, I'd like to know what you've been up to. Raymond told Mikey you were going through something—I didn't know what to make of that._

_When you stopped writing after December I thought you were trying to put an end to it. Now, I'd respect your decision if I had a bit more insight. I find it absurd of you to cut me off and leave me high and dry without a word. You better write back._

_I can meet you this summer. I start (if I decide to continue) school early August again. You have my new address. God, you better write back._

_Yours,_ _Prettyboy_

_***_

I hadn't left for Massachusetts. I told Robert I did and he, in turn, told Ray because I had informed everyone I would be out of reach. 

Jack Cooper had undergone the arduous death of his relatives and by the time he was back to reality, his divorce had come through, his wife had scandalized him; naturally, he had vanished from her eyes. It was for him, just like it had been for me, the end of Pennsylvania. He returned to his hometown in Texas and as soon as I got word, I had found my excuse to leave the lonely Studio.

The quirk in my work, one I could not see myself, had moved some critics, then some more, and then some artists who were calling me up for collaboration or for my contribution in various other projects. I was asked if I had ever considered film-making. Remunerative offers came up and Robert was getting all giddy about it. I got rankled by all the fuss so I needed to leave the city once again, in December 1964. 

When the travelogue on a road trip John Steinbeck had along with his dog, Charley, came out in '62, he described Texas as such: _"Texas is an obsession. Above all, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word."_  Both Jack and I agreed in that, Texans would use that quote again and again throughout eons to brag about their ridiculous, cowboy state that asks to 'Drive Friendly - The Texas Way'. Though we had our fun in Texas. The obsession lied elsewhere, nevertheless.

Jack Cooper helped me realize a couple of things in '65, one of them being that I could be happy again. I didn't think it possible before; for a while, waking up every day alone at The Studio was a stark reminder of how hapless I was. I could not feel anything but the dull melancholy of my apartment. Happiness is never something tangible, but back then, it seemed so out of my reach. I came to realize and accept that by meeting Gerard again, I could only do us bad. So, I crossed it out. It just couldn't happen. 

And when his letters came in, my remorse was stronger than ever. I could not muster up the courage for a reply.

So I shut down. I left The Studio and didn't receive any letters anymore. I wrote to him on his birthday last and that was it.

The other thing Jack Cooper made me realize was that I could listen to King of The Road for a hundred times and never grow tired of it. I made a bet that it would someday be the only Roger Miller hit to resonate through the years. It was so good. It came out in January, and I heard it for the first time when we were driving on some lonesome Texas town. Cooper already knew the words to it and he was whistling to the tune of it.

We stayed on the outskirts of the state, in a shabby cabin, isolated from the world. It felt like a hiding place for a while, with me being so desperate to get away from New York and all. There was no art gallery in the vicinity, no skyscrapers and no opportunity, stashed away at every corner of every street. The winter was stinging-cold but refreshingly so. Most importantly, I had taken the time for me to make a compromise with myself and limit the amount of drinking I used to do. I used to drink lots in New York, alone or not. Robert would drop by sometimes, sometimes twice a day, and that's when he'd point at an empty bottle of whiskey or gin of mine and say, "That was full this morning," in the most scolding, condescending, concerned manner I've ever heard him use.

"Yeah. Yeah, it was."

He'd draw out a: "So. . ."

"So, what?"

"So, you see the issue."

And I wouldn't say anything for a while, but look down at my hands as a child did when admonished by his mother for breaking her favorite, expensive vase.

Robert would often suggest getting away. 

"But I just got back; I thought you wanted me back in New York."

"Yeah, for getting work done because that usually keeps you sane. But I ain't letting you become an alcoholic! What happened anyway? Acid. Why so keen on the acid, all of a sudden?"

Why so keen on acid, indeed. But need I really explain? Perhaps Robert never knew, and there was no one else to notice but my apartment and the lady at the grocery store, but I hurt myself so badly to grow out of it, most importantly, out of him. And you only convalesce from addictions with other addictions, and a bottle of beer or gin was always tangible and reachable; so much more tangible than just a memory.

It was closer than a phone call or a piece of beige paper and a pen. 

But I scared myself when I would wake up at midday and not recognize myself. I recalled Jack Cooper was there, he had been there. Thus, I bought myself a '63 Thunderbird and hit the road, no bottles of stinging alcohol in the backseat, no scrapbooks of pretty boys that were off living the way they should live in San Francisco, beautiful California. And Cooper became the dearest friend of mine the second I saw him again. Who needs acid if you've got company? I admit I had been the one to stall the relationship we could have and when I drove to Texas, I regretted having waited for so long. 

And while Gerard and an Oliver Key were at the beginning of the fights at Barkley in New Year's, what would later inspire Stonewall and whatnot, I was doing so much less, but still, I was taking big steps forward. I was accepting and living with it. 

Though relationships were never my forte, Jack and I shared one quite unique.

Gerard and I did not meet in the summer of 1965.

 


End file.
